


A Splinter in Time

by EskelChopChop



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: AU: Eskel joins the final battle against the Wild Hunt, Branding, Disassociation, Eskferalt may be the ultimate power throuple, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Multi, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Repetition Compulsion, Secondary Traumatic Stress, Self-Blame, Self-Hatred, Sexual self-harm, alcohol as a shitty coping mechanism, also failed or imperfect attempts at comfort, black humor as an okay coping mechanism, drunk casual sex as self-harm masquerading as a shitty coping mechanism, it takes guts to tremble, it takes so much tremble to love, past unwanted orgasm, reclaiming humanity after being dehumanized, some fluff in the last two chapters, traumatic flashbacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:27:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 63,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27219370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EskelChopChop/pseuds/EskelChopChop
Summary: (Spoilers for The Witcher 3 and scattered spoilers for / references to the books)Eskel loses the duel against Caranthir during the Battle of Kaer Morhen, and Caranthir takes them both through a portal before Ciri can intervene. Yennefer and Ciri are able to rescue Eskel from Tir na Lia soon after, but not before something terrible’s done to him. Now, while joining Yen, Geralt, and Ciri in their fight against the Wild Hunt, Eskel faces another battle different from any he’s fought before.
Relationships: Caranthir Ar-Feiniel/Eskel, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Eskel, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon/Cerys an Craite, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon/Priscilla, Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Eskel/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion/Priscilla
Comments: 16
Kudos: 51





	1. in the presence of mine enemies

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note
> 
> I’m explaining a few things--
> 
> \--this is a story about surviving rape & recovering afterward. And also defeating the Wild Hunt. Fuck those guys.
> 
> \--the established relationship here is Eskel / Yen / Geralt. There’s no time to explain, get on the ship!
> 
> \--you know those stories that exist for the main goal of opening a hole in the skull and letting the demons out? That’s this-- part fic, part exorcism. 
> 
> \--I mark off graphic flashbacks with signposts. There are also scattered flashbacks to specific moments and sensory details of the assault that have trigger potential. Please proceed with self-knowledge & self-care
> 
> \--Gratitude & so much love to asfroste for beta-reading, for support, for bearing witness, & everything else
> 
> \-- _What I know about living  
>  is the pain is never just ours.  
> Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo,  
> so I keep listening for the moment the grief becomes a window,  
> when I can see what I couldn’t see before_  
> \--Andrea Gibson, [“The Nutritionist”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3rxp2AWLTM)
> 
> <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: contains a graphic description of a brutal sexual assault in flashback. “ **======================** ” marks the start of the flashback-- if you’d prefer to skip it, stop reading at the first **==================** , skim down, and resume reading after the second “ **==================** ”
> 
> Also, I totally stole the kasha thing from fayet’s [Hibernating with Ghosts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23119000). After reading that fic, I can’t imagine the witchers eating anything else for breakfast.

“Must you move like that?” 

Avallac’h’s voice is cold, uncanny. A marble statue would talk like that. Geralt’s walking a sword’s blade edge and even the sound of his own thudding boots pushes him toward the last inch of endurance. Avallac’h’s emotionless _Aen Elle_ voice? That about shoves him over.

Geralt glares at the Aen Saevherne. Avllac’h’s eyes shine back at him coolly. Cold as the touch of frost that his former associates bring with them. It’s still silvering the stones of the keep outside, where the sun rarely finds its way between the peaks. 

“Sorry,” Geralt snarls, “noise bothering you? Need some beeswax plugs?”

The elven sage’s perfect marble face doesn’t move. “Have some trust in Zirael. You’ve seen what she can do.”

“Her name’s Ciri.” 

The heat of it sears Geralt’s tongue and he has to turn his back. Can’t let the elf see the filthy _dhoine_ overcome by petty human emotion. 

“Cirilla, then,” Avallac’h’s voice says behind him. “Trust her, witcher.”

“You have no idea how much I trust her.”

If Avallac’h has a smart remark about that, he leaves it unsaid. 

How long has it been since Yennefer opened the portal to Tir na Lia and she and Ciri stepped through? Should’ve set an hourglass. Wouldn’t tell him much but after three hours he’d guess that they'd been captured too. Yen, Ciri, and Eskel are all somewhere in another dimension and they might need him. He could make Avallac’h open a portal, not listen to an answer other than ‘yes.’ 

How did it go this badly? Vesemir’s ashes have blown over Morhen Valley by now. He imagines dull ash like snow flaking over the cold river current, the branches of the pines. Eskel’s been taken somewhere. Only Ciri saw it. She was the only one in the inner keep when Caranthir and a cadre of Wild Hunt warriors portaled in. Eskel challenged the Wild Hunt’s navigator-general alone. He had a snowball’s chance against Igni, but how could he’ve known? Was it a week ago when they’d stood in that meadow, in the sunlight, Eskel with his arms crossed and that smirk light tug at his lip as he said he was just a simple witcher-- not one to fight dragons, kings, or invading forces from other worlds? Destiny had never entangled him with the Wild Hunt. Not ‘til Geralt dragged him in. 

Eskel, you fearless idiot, Geralt thinks, blurry and desperate. That was Caranthir. You could’ve run. Should’ve. 

Even now, he can imagine Eskel’s deep chuckle, the mocking warm reply: _When have I ever run, Wolf?_

He never has. 

Geralt hears the whoosh of a portal opening. He turns and there’s the hole in space, a whirl of heatless fire. Avallac’h braces himself in the orange light. So does Geralt. Steel for humans, silver for monsters and sons-of-bitches from Tir na Lia. He’ll take on the whole of the Wild Hunt if he has to. 

Yennefer stumbles out and it’s like a prayer answered. Ciri’s at her side, both of them staggering under the weight of--

“Eskel!” Geralt’s at his brother’s side. He’s reaching for him, his arms wanting to take their positions where they belong around Eskel’s chest. Eskel’s fallen to his knees, one arm wrapped around his stomach and the other held up, palm out, toward Geralt. A gesture that says: stay back.

Geralt obeys, falls to his knees, bones grinding against the flagstones. He’s not that old yet, he can take it. He sits back on his heels to inhale the three of them-- Yen and Ciri, the alien trace of whatever hangs in the atmosphere of Tir na Lia-- magic, elvish scent, another world’s combination of foreign animals, plants, and vapors. Then he smells Eskel and beneath the witcher-animal-human smell that he’d know from miles off, something’s sharp and curdled. He sniffs again. Eskel is not wearing his armor or his weapons. They would take those from him, that’s expected. There’s-- something else-- unfamiliar sweat and--

“Fuckin’ hell,” Ciri hisses, “they’ll not be following us, will they?” 

“Not if this works.” Yen lifts her hands, chants ancient syllables with no meaning to him, and bursts of purple light stream into the portal that snaps shut and vanishes.

“There.” Yen pats her gloves together, dusting off nothing. Magic doesn’t leave that kind of residue. “Let them try jumping after us. They’ll end up where they belong.”

Geralt doesn’t ask.

“Good,” Ciri spits. She’s breathing hard, and she lets herself collapse onto the flagstones with legs splayed wide like a man. “Bastards all. I only wish I could see them burn!”

“Have a nice trip?” Geralt asks.

“Hardly. Aen Elle hospitality leaves much to be desired.” Yen says it with her usual arch bite but she’s wrapped her arms around herself. Strangely withdrawn posture for her.

Something isn’t right. Yen’s posture is off, Ciri’s too hard and blustery, and Eskel’s smell…

Geralt leans forward on his knees. Eskel’s not looking at any of them. “How you doing?” Geralt murmurs, aiming his voice at the floor, where it might bounce up and reach Eskel’s face like the kiss he can’t give him now.

Eskel’s holding his stomach in as if his guts might fall out. His eyes stay fixed to the floor. 

“Holdin’ up,” Eskel mutters. His tone is flat. Geralt turns his head a fraction of an inch at the discordant note and Eskel must see it out the corner of his eye. He turns his face away. 

Geralt frowns. Eskel’s come back from hunts with his arm ripped open and nearly hanging off at the elbow and he’s laughed about it, joked that they could weld a silver blade to the left arm and a steel to the right and he wouldn’t have to worry about a sore left shoulder where the sword strap hangs. Geralt would joke that he’d have to give up his favorite lover, his hand, and that’d escalate until someone wound up pinned and panting. Kissable and ripe for biting.

They did something to him. He knows it in his gut. Geralt’s eyes rake his body. He knows where the angles should be and they’re there, curves reporting for duty in the right places. Eskel’s shirtless, the sloping bulk of him exposed. Back looks fine, except that scar from the manticore a couple summers back. It’s ugly as ever. Should’ve gone to a proper surgeon for the stitching, or the Temple of Melitele, Geralt keeps telling him. The thick scarred forearms and workman’s hands are still intact except for an angry rash around each wrist, pockmarked where the skin’s broken. They must’ve put him in dimeritium. The bulky square of his jaw is still the right shape, except for a bulging bruise on one cheek. Someone slugged him good. 

“What do you need?” Geralt says. “Got Swallow. Know you never make enough.” It’s a tease of a jab. It sinks into nothingness and disappears without reaction. “Or White Honey?” he tries, more serious. 

“No.” Eskel’s voice is still flat. The voice of a man in either a trance or the grave. “I’m fine.” 

The lie is so blatant that Geralt looks for help. Ciri’s got her chin in her hand and her palm turns her face away from all of them. Yen’s eyes, though-- soft-- pained-- they’re warnings. 

Eskel’s stirring. He’s been hunched over on his knees since he landed in Kaer Morhen and as he straightens, his eyes stay low. A knowing avoidance. He looked like this when they were boys and Vesemir asked who tied that giant bee to a jar. Eskel’s no good at hiding. Even now, Eskel’s letting the arm curled around his stomach fall. Now Geralt can see the burn marks on his belly, liquid and shapeless, like an acid splatter. Odd form of torture. Aren’t the Aen Elle more careful than this? More systematic? The torchlight flickers and shows that the burn marks glimmer in two different colors. There’s a splatter of light blue on Eskel’s belly, a few dots scattered upward from the epicenter with little comet-streaks. The other color is dark red, the color of fresh pooling blood before it coagulates. There’s more of that color and it’s splattered higher, a few dots speckling the slope of Eskel’s chest. Must be magic, gotta be with those almost iridescent colors, but why’s it this sloppy? 

Geralt doesn’t expect Avallac’h to stir. It’s a minor movement, a sleeve shifting, but Geralt has the instinct to look up. He sees the same expression coming over the faces of Eskel and Avallac’h. Like neither of them can look anyone in the eye again. 

“Ciri.” Yen’s voice rings, all command. “Get Eskel some water. He’s been through enough tonight, we shan’t parch him. Geralt.” Those violet eyes have shifted into their usual imperious certainty. It’s comforting even as he knows it’s pretend. “Come with me. Let’s make Eskel a proper bed-- see if we can find something more suitable than a wooden pallet, hm?”

Yen steers him by the elbow from the main hall. Geralt tilts his head to ask her what happened but now there are footsteps behind them, an ethereal floral note, and Avallac’h’s at Yen’s other side.

“Forgive me,” the elf says. It’s the last thing Geralt expects to hear and he turns a full glare at the elf’s forehead, since Avallac’h has eyes only for Yen. “What was done to your friend. It is not the way of the Aen Elle.”

“Of course not.” Yen’s voice could shear the beards from old Skelligan warriors. “You’re far too civilized for such depravities. Unlike us filthy _dhoine_ , yes?”

Avallac’h grimaces. Yen isn’t looking, but Geralt allows himself a moment’s savage pride on her behalf. “It _is_ barbaric,” he says, his cool tone as close to apologetic as it ever gets. “Inhumane and debasing. I can offer no justification. I hope only that you can accept my deep apologies on behalf of--”

Yen stops and whirls on him. She is a short woman-- the top of her head just reaches Geralt’s shoulder-- but the fury radiating from her is such that even Geralt’s tempted to take a step back. Avallac’h gives into that temptation. “Stop. What good are your apologies? I don’t give a damn for them or any other pitifully inadequate remark you might offer. Get out of my sight. At this hour I’ve only the patience for _civilized_ company.”

Avallac’h bows and withdraws without another word. Yen nudges Geralt’s arm and they’re stalking forward again. 

“Yen,” Geralt sighs, “we don’t have enough celandine.”

She arches an eyebrow at him. “Hm?”

“For the deep cut you just gave him.” 

“Mm.” Geralt knows that coy tilt at the corner of her lip. She’s pleased, even if she doesn’t want to show it. “Pity. He’ll have to cauterize it.”

“What was he saying?”

 _Sh,_ Yen’s voice sounds in his head. _Quiet now._

 _Yen,_ Geralt thinks, _are you honestly worried about what he’ll think?_

 _I haven’t a single fuck to give for Avallac’h, Geralt. This is for Eskel. Witcher hearing and all that._

_For Eskel? Why?_

_He doesn’t need to hear us having this discussion._ Yen steals a sidelong glance at him. _You do understand-- yes, Geralt?_

 _Understand what?_ Geralt hopes his bewildered inner voice sounds as expressive as it does in his head. _What am I supposed to know now?_

Yen’s lips tighten and she lets out an exhale that’s louder than usual. _What they did to him. In Tir na Lia._

Geralt frowns. _Am I supposed to remember? From my time with the Hunt? You know I lost my memory, Yen._

_So you’ve said. Repeatedly, ad nauseam._

_You did too, as I recall._

Yen raises her chin. Her eyes have gone cold.

 _If they did this to you_ , Yen’s voice says in his head, _I will borrow one of your witcher trophy hooks. I will kill them all. Slowly. Perhaps more than once. And I will line a pit with their heads and use it as my privy._

_Nice picture. Guessing they tortured him?_

She looks at him sidelong again, and this time her eyebrows crinkle. _Oh, love. You truly do not know._

_You know I hate these games, Yen. Just tell me._

She tells him. 

Geralt stops mid-step. He might as well grow roots. Yen takes a couple steps to notice and stop herself but when she does, she has no remark to leave lacerations, no arched eyebrow. Her eyes are soft. This woman who has lived over a hundred years and has seen so many varieties of earthly suffering-- her eyes are never soft. 

They stand like this for a time that does not feel like time. When they move again, it is not because Geralt can believe what he’s heard. He has to keep moving, keep his mind blank, so he doesn’t have to. 

* * *

Eskel lies awake in the guest bedroom. They’ve made a playground of it, pillows and blankets piled up around him like he’s turned to glass. Looks like a cushy cairn, if you think about it. Ha, ha. Bury me in down feathers. Some witcher burial.

_You’re no witcher._

He twitches. That voice isn’t here. Ignore it. 

The fireplace roars. He’s thrown as much wood as he can into the narrow opening where the wood can be devoured--

devoured--

devoured--

into so much ash. It’ll be cold when the fire dies. And dark. The fire’s no protection. Don’t think about it. Don’t think. It’s quiet here. Kaer Morhen. You know Kaer Morhen. It’s home. You coulda died here-- if not from the Trials, from being an idiot with too much balls and too little brains and a friend named Geralt as idiot as you. 

Friend. Brother. Heh. How the years change. 

It’s late. Oughta sleep. His body is-- 

His thoughts turn red, sear hot, angry streaks into him. He can’t hold a thought without burning his palms. Not the body. Kaer Morhen. You know Kaer Morhen. It’s--

Too late, he’s here in this infernal red-lit space. He tenses, braces. Feels Quen too little too late light up around him and the far-away ceiling’s ablaze with light. 

His body-- his body-- his body-- his body-- a body-- 

The air blazes. Too much contact. Everything’s a too-close touch. The bed, the sheets, the fucking air. The heat from the bonfire he’s made in the hearth. Nose and mouth and ears and ass, the air in the room invades him. He thrashes, kicks the sheets. They’re slithery-soft and wrap around his ankles and won’t fly off. Sinuous, clutching. He wants to Igni them, make ash of them and the bedframe and the stones. Burn every stone of Kaer Morhen ‘til it’s leveled and then float a couple feet above the scorched earth where nothing will touch him and then, _then_ he can sleep, when he’s untouchable.

Eskel digs his fingers into the mattress underneath him. He’s sinking into it. It’s enveloping the heavy weight of his hips which he needs to-- needs to-- protect-- 

Ha, ha. Protect yourself. How’d that fucking work out?

He wrenches himself out of bed, heaves sheets and blankets and the wall of pillows aside. He needs a wall. Rock, stone. A rigid plane that won’t wrap around his flesh and say _beg me not to--_

Eskel flattens his spine against the wall, heels, naked ass cheeks, shoulder blades, the back of his skull. It’s not winter but Kaer Morhen stores cold in its bones. The stones radiate chill into him. Fire-warmed air on his front, cold without give against his back. Good. He can breathe better here. With his back against the wall, no one can--

His back is against the wall. Nothing can touch his back except this wall and if he clenches his jaw and scraps his fingers against it just enough to hurt, like this, he can stand it. 

They’re coming anyway. He knows. His body will bend useless and weak and he’ll be a tool again. A rake gets more care. No one asks a rake how it’s doing when it bends or breaks a tine against a stone. 

At least he can see them coming. He’ll hear them at the door. Down in the courtyard. Coming down the fireplace. Better build the fire higher. 

\-- _the torches aren’t bright where he is, only enough to cast shadows, the torches are behind him and he’s bent forward at the waist and when he lifts his too-heavy head he can see the shadow of his own head wavering on the stone wall, double of him, two-headed watery shadow, and the head and shoulders and arms and torso of the shadow towering over his--_

Stop. No shadow. No torches. Fireplace, there’s a fireplace, there’s the fireplace that he prepared sometimes for guests. This oughta be Yen’s fireplace. They all oughta be here, the three of them, but--

\--it’s a whisper in his ear, he can feel the flush of hot breath against the back of the neck. No, there’s nothing behind him but wall. No, he can feel it, it’s happening now, it’s been happening ever since--

_You will remember this. Remember your body covered in my--_

It’s just a body. Bodies, the hell are they worth? Flesh, meat, muscle. Parts. Nothing special. He’s split ‘em open so many times, sawed the claws off of harpies, the hides off of deer, the brains out of drowners. Profitable butchery. His body, now, it ain’t worth much. Too old, too many scars, meat’s too lean. Nothing pretty enough to mount on a wall. 

Yet--

That elf. He took it anyway, didn’t he. Made Eskel’s whole body his trophy. 

Ha, ha. Stupid fucking elves. Don’t know a bum deal when it’s stripped down in front of ‘em. Get it. _Bum._

He wants to laugh. To puke. There’s a rough hand grabbing a fistful of his hair and forcing his head up through the wall across dimensions and time and he wants to slam his head back against that Kaer Morhen-cold stone until his skull caves in. Until witcher brains splatter and streak down to the floor. Wonder if those’re good for a potion. A few crowns.

“Fuck,” Eskel mutters. There’s no force in it. 

The fire’s hot. The floor’s cold against the soles of his bare feet. Temperature-- that’s all he feels, and he feels it like a drunk surprised to find himself on the floor. Not quite sure it’s real. 

After all, he thinks, what’s the big deal. Another scar. 

Eskel stands with his back against the cold stone wall. Stands and stands. Where he is, there is no time. 

The fire’s low when one of the logs cracks and caves in. For no reason, that snaps him back to awareness. Eskel shifts an inch forward to let the air between his back and the wall. It’s harsh and unwelcome against his back but like before, he’s got no fight left in him. He heaves himself into bed, lets the air and the blankets crowd against him. Lies numb until the fire goes out. 

* * *

“Well, look who it is,” Lambert yawns. He slings an arm around Eskel’s shoulders and Eskel can see it coming so he’s able to fight the animal instinct to tense up, shy away. “Morning, big brother!”

“Gods damn,” Eskel hears from his own mouth, the easy automatic rhythm of decades taking over for him, “now I gotta look at your face? I’m eating.”

“Didn’t mean to spoil your appetite,” Lambert says, just as easy. He pulls Eskel close, or tries to. Eskel’s too bulky and too uninterested in budging from his bowl of kasha. “Good to have you back. Great surprise to wake up to, considering nobody thought to _tell me_.”

The youngest Wolf glares at the group of haggard faces gathered around the breakfast table: Yen nearly collapsed onto the table with her chin in her hand, Geralt hunkered over a mug of tea, Ciri playing with her spoon over a bowl of half-eaten kasha, Avallac’h-- Eskel flinches at the sound of the elven name in his own head. Anyway, the elf isn’t here. Neither is Zoltan, Geralt’s dwarf friend. Someone mentioned that he’s excavating the inner gateway. Seems Vesemir collapsed the stonework there to block the Wild Hunt’s advance during the battle.

Vesemir. Old man’s dead, they’ve told him. Hard to believe he’s capable of dying. For all the times they’ve talked about death like an old friend who comes without invitation to all the wrong parties, Vesemir’s always been the exception. 

Eskel can see the hole that the old man’s left in Geralt, Ciri, and even Lambert. Like they’ve each lost an organ and they’ll survive it, but the wound’s still bleeding. Eskel reaches down to see if he’s got the same hole. He can’t tell. There’s nothing inside him but fog.

Ciri looks up, gods bless her. “From what we heard,” she said, “you were well-occupied with other matters.”

Lambert’s grin is only a little lecherous. “I’d say sorry, but-- can you blame me?”

Yen makes a sound of disgust in the back of her throat. “And where is my esteemed sister of whom you speak so highly, Lambert?” 

“Getting her beauty sleep.” Lambert turns to the pot of kasha simmering on the hearth. “Not that she needs any extra help. Unlike some.” 

“Alright,” Geralt cuts in quickly, “maybe it’s time we sorted our plans for the day.”

Ciri sighs. “You know where I’ll be. It’s another lovely day of tutoring with Avallac’h.”

“Hmph,” Geralt grunts. “Would you prefer to run a few laps ‘round the Killer?”

“At this point? Absolutely.”

“Been too long, kid. If you remembered the Killer right, you wouldn’t say that.” Lambert slides into place on the bench opposite Geralt and Yen. “Me and Keira, we’re heading out today. The big guy’s safe-- battle’s won, more or less. And we finally got a halfway decent stonemason up here, not that anyone’s coming back to this place.”

“You never know,” Eskel mutters.

Geralt meets his eyes. Eskel still can’t feel much-- the hard give of the bench underneath him, the heat of the kasha in his mouth though not the taste-- but something flickers when Geralt looks at him. “Zoltan’s a true professional,” Geralt says, speaking to the group but looking at Eskel. “Can’t leave shitty stonework in place. It offends his sensibility.”

Lambert snorts. “Then he’s gonna be here a long time. Hn. Dwarves.”

“Professionals.” Yen tilts her head at a certain deadly angle, one inch to the right. “Perhaps you’ve heard the word?” 

Lambert straightens. 

“Think I’ll hunt wargs today,” Eskel says loudly.

Everyone stares at him. Ciri’s had the least practice in controlling her expression and her eyebrows are a mess of furrows.

It just came out of his mouth. Gotta move around, go somewhere, do something, doesn’t matter what. Feel something through the fog. “The old man wanted it done… before. Mentioned it before you got here.” Eskel lifts his chin toward Ciri. 

“Splendid,” Yen says. “Their incessant howling makes a terrible racket. Perhaps we’ll all get a decent night’s sleep tonight.”

They all look like they need it. 

“I’ll help,” Geralt says. 

Yen and Ciri-- they’ve got the same look, like they want to pile their pillow cairn on top of him. Geralt’s too eager about the warg thing. They look at Eskel like he’s glass about to break. Irritating. What’re they looking at? He’s not here. He’s vapor. He’s nothing at all.

“Great,” Eskel says, lowers his head, and shovels an over-large spoonful of kasha into his mouth. It’s too hot. He’s surprised when the fog lets in one patch of sensation: his tongue burning.

They must not’ve told Lambert everything. After breakfast, with Keira’s many trunks and his single bag packed, Lambert encloses Eskel in a tight hug and pounds him on the back, talking about the tavern where they’ll meet up and the winter they’ll spend not freezing their asses off. Lambert’s body is in contact with his. It’s dizzying. After Keira portals them out, Eskel realizes why: no one else has tried to touch him. 

* * *

Geralt and Eskel, they’re not prattling types. After traveling with bardic sorts, the quiet of Kaer Morhen and Eskel’s company is usually a balm. But as they walk north out of Kaer Morhen, through the breach that has managed to remake itself after their quick patch job, Geralt’s having a hard time fitting into this silence. It itches, it fits wrong. Eskel’s listening, smiles faintly at the right places, but his eyes might as well stare at a megascope. At something distant as a star.

The look doesn’t leave him even when they find the wolf pack. Eskel’s usually the one to stop them, sniff the air, pick the right tactical direction. But this time he draws the sword that he picked out of the storeroom and strides forward without pause or a plan. 

The pack launches itself at them from all directions. Geralt takes the left, Eskel takes the right, a pack of two themselves, and the next few moments are blades and blood and the golden sheen of Quen and the flash of Igni. 

Couldn’t be more than a minute before all the wolves are dead. Too bad wolf’s no good for eating, or they’d have a feast. Geralt’s wiping his blade when he hears the slither of a blade slicing through muscle. 

It’s Eskel, staring down at the ruddy-brown body of the leader. The warg. Eskel’s eyes are flat as he shoves the borrowed blade into the warg corpse. He twists until the tendons pop and then keeps twisting. 

Geralt waits, watching Eskel. There’s something grotesque about the way he moves right now. Like a golem, Geralt thinks. Material animated by magic but with no soul inside. That’s what Eskel looks like as he twists his witcher’s blade in the warg’s carcass. There’s a new smell, some organ split open. Eskel’s flat eyes don’t change.

“I think it’s dead,” Geralt says finally. 

He isn’t sure Eskel heard him. Takes a while for Eskel’s eyes to flick up to his and when they do, Geralt clenches his jaw. Those eyes that have made all of Geralt’s winters warmer, they’ve altered. They belong on a corpse.

“How can you tell?” The corner of Eskel’s mouth twitches but it’s a corpse’s face trying to remember how to smile.

“It’s not wagging its tail.”

Eskel’s face splits into a rictus grin. His eyes are still dead. He looks down, considers the warg corpse for a moment. In the time of a heartbeat, he’s raised his sword and brought it down on the stump of the warg’s tail. It splits cleanly at the base. Eskel reaches down, picks up the severed tail. Waggles it around so it flops left and right in grotesque mockery.

“How ‘bout now?” the dead man says.

Geralt raises an eyebrow. Eskel looks at him and sees something through whatever pall’s dropped over him. He drops the tail and it lands in the dirt with a soft thud.

“Geralt,” Eskel says. They’re his eyes again. “Think I’m losin’ my head.”

“It’s alright,” Geralt says. He’s not sure it is. They’ve faced nine decades of a witcher’s shit life together but this new thing, Geralt can’t sense the shape of it. Tries to see the form of the monster they’re fighting but every time he looks, it’s gotten bigger, and when he reaches for Eskel it’s an Eskel split into pieces: Eskel distant and silent, Eskel with a blade in one hand and a body part like a fucked up toy in the other, Eskel the living corpse. He can’t tell which one he’s talking to.

One of them is looking at Geralt now. “Do you know what happened? In Tir na Lia?”

A black space yawns inside Geralt. “Yeah.” 

“No. You don’t.”

“No,” Geralt concedes, but he keeps the rest to himself: that the idea of it makes his head go wrong. His wry, wise, unshakable Eskel, overpowered, shackled, stripped, forced to-- no, no, no. Geralt doesn’t want to know what happened. Now or ever. 

Eskel looks up at the pine branches overhead. “Thought I’d been through everything,” he says to the forest, the sky. “Had the scars to prove it. And then.” His eyes and mouth move, searching for the feel of the right words. All he can do is shake his head. 

“You got through it,” Geralt says. “Best you can do now is put it behind you.”

Eskel stares up into the trees. He doesn’t answer, but his mouth tightens. 

Wind ripples the shadows of branches and in a quick burst of sunlight across the scarred face, Geralt sees him: his living Eskel, split open. His armor’s cloven and what’s underneath is so freshly torn, Geralt thinks immediately of Swallow. No. A proper surgeon. Eskel is a mortal wound. 

“Eskel…”

Geralt takes a step toward his brother. He means to use the mass of his body as bandages and salve, something to close the weeping wound at Eskel’s center. But Eskel jumps back. Not playful; it’s a dodge from a deadly stroke. His pupils dilate until his eyes are nearly all black and before Geralt understands what’s happening, a Quen shield blazes between them.

“Whoa.” Geralt backs away, holding up both empty palms. “Hey. Eskel.”

Eskel’s Quen thickens until it’s nearly solid. Might as well be a gold ingot, half-melted and rippling in the heat of a forge. Within the protective sphere of his Sign, Eskel stands frozen. His black eyes stare at something Geralt can’t see. 

“You’re alright.” Geralt makes his voice as soft as he can. He doesn’t know how to make himself smaller. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

The Quen shield writhes. Geralt’s never seen a Quen do that. It’s like an oil film coating the spherical shell of the Sign, a spreading sickness.

Then the Sign fades. Eskel’s still holding his bloodied sword. 

“Don’t do that,” Eskel says quietly. 

“Okay.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“Won’t do anything to you. Won’t ever.” Geralt’s desperate now. “Eskel, _it’s me._ ”

Eskel gives him a look from the bottom of the sea. “Stop.”

This man is a stranger. What can Geralt tell him? I’ve trusted you with my life a hundred times, you’ve trusted me with yours? The wheel turns but you have always been its center, you are what I come back to through seasons and decades, Eskel, Eskel, don’t you know me? Geralt wants to grab him, shake him until the haze parts and he sees what he’s always seen in Eskel’s eyes: his own soul known, kept safe, grown deep.

It’s drowned somewhere inside this stranger. The depths go down and down beyond his reach.

Geralt breathes out. Steps back until the distance between them stretches. “Alright.”

Eskel breathes out, too. Won’t look at him. “Let’s get back.”

“You sure?”

Eskel nods instead of answering. 

“Alright.” 

Neither of them moves. Geralt inhales the stench of wolf and warg blood. It’s a massacre, but nothing else has noticed. Above them, in the sunlight atop the pines, the birds are singing. 

* * *

Something’s unraveling in Eskel. 

They have to get back. 

Get back? Get back where? The torches are flickering. There’s a shadow of his head on the wall, and above him--

It’s not real. They are not in Tir na Lia. They are--

Eskel walks faster. His skin itches. He’s wearing a leather jacket that’s cracked with age and neglect, probably belonged to some poor dead sap, and the splashes on his stomach should be burning. A mark like that, he shouldn’t be able to forget it. It oughta hurt.

 _Go on_ , the voice chuckles against the back of his neck. _Beg me not to._

He has to get back to the keep. It has strong walls, Yen’s magic, the concentrated threat of the last surviving witchers. The long low hearth that beckons him home in winter. It’ll be burning now--

burning like the torches in a dimeritium-lined cell or the magic burning drops and splatters into the skin of his stomach. A branding. _You will remember this--_

“Fuck you,” Eskel growls and he can sense Geralt following behind, can hear Geralt hearing him and wondering if he should ask or stay quiet. A body following him. He can’t do it. 

Eskel stops, stands aside. “You go in front. I’ll follow.” He lowers his eyes, sees Geralt’s hips angled turned toward him.

“...alright,” Geralt says, and walks ahead. 

Now there’s no sound of breathing behind Eskel as they walk. Better. 

He thought the warg hunting would help. Eskel’s been floating a couple inches above his body, sensing hot and cold and soreness without feeling it. Thought a fight would help, death and blood, bodies on the ground. The adrenaline cure. It worked, it’s anchored him into his flesh, and he realized too late that’s not where he wants to be. Now everything that was muted and deadened has returned, every nerve’s exposed to air. He can feel all of it. Hair yanked to lift his skull. Weight and burn of dimeritium around his trapped wrists. A cleaving open inch by inch, each push a new fissure, and he

has to

has to

get to Kaer Morhen. It has walls. That wall he stood against last night. He’ll find a wall. A wall. Something to press against. No room for someone to get behind him. 

Geralt looks back at him over his shoulder. Eyebrows furrowed. Must hear Eskel’s heartbeat. Fuck. It’s a blacksmith’s mallet, clang-clang. Eskel can’t look at him. Can’t stop. Wills Geralt to keep moving and to ask no questions and merciful gods Geralt obeys. 

They get to the fortress. Walls, stone, tile. Geralt stops walking, Eskel doesn’t. Eskel’s not running but Ciri and and and the elf are sitting in the main hall, and Ciri looks up at him, and then Avallac’h does too--

The elf. Aen Elle. Those ice-blue eyes, the cheekbones like mountain ridges, the same thin mouth. Eskel knows them all. Here come the torches and the beautiful cruel smile and Eskel’s wrists yanked together for the dimeritium--

He has to go has to go. Has to go now.

Someone calls his name but he has to be gone. His body takes him up to the room. Guest room. The bed with pillows, blankets. 

Eskel closes the door, plants Yrden on the planks. It’ll buy time when they come for him. They’ll come for him. They’re already here. Frost and armor like bone. Ice blue eyes. Thin lips that grin as he breaks. 

Eskel signs Quen. The shield’s thick enough to take a ballista. It won’t last, they’ll find him. Find him. Find him. He’s trapped. They’re already inside. 

He’s fighting to the top of his head. Animal panic running rampant. He can’t contain it or hold it back but if he can hold one thread to reality, something outside the Terror, he can find his way back. Come on then, let it out. Emergency medicine, first lessons-- don’t let it get infected-- open the wound dig out the rot clean it and _then_ stitch it closed, gotta dig it out, so dig it out--

and he

he lets himself

_here it comes_

lets himself feel-- 

**=======================================================================================**

\--Caranthir. 

Caranthir’s behind him. Has spent every moment behind him, pulling his head up by the hair and keeping his chest pinned to the pallet that passes for a bed in this dimeritium-lined cell and Eskel struggles but his shoulders strain from pulling at the shackles that bite into his wrists so when the metal slides up he can see his own skin chafed raw but he pulls anyway because Caranthir is behind him carving into him and it’s only fingers he has to remind himself only fingers (for now) except he’s splitting open at that most delicate seam of the body and the familiar violence of body against body isn’t enough no Caranthir’s searing him open prying him open bloody and then igniting something in there and Eskel knows it’s magic because there’s no smell of burning only raw pain itself lancing into him and up through his spine so he almost tastes his own singed flesh on his tongue and that shouldn’t be possible in walls lined with dimeritium but that doesn’t stop Caranthir nothing will stop Caranthir who tells him commands him burns him open and orders him _beg me not to fuck you_ again and again and Eskel bites down on the taste of his own burning as long as he can but as long as he can is not forever and when he finally can’t help but obey it’s a frothing hysterical no an eviscerated no ripped from a dismeboweled thing but Caranthir unmoved devours it with that beautiful cruel smile and says _you’re getting my cock and there’s nothing you can do about it_ and Eskel knows in his emptied gut that the no has been the real quarry all along because it makes Caranthir ready now hardened now sweaty already as he positions himself behind Eskel and Eskel struggles but there’s nowhere to go it’s true there’s nothing he can do and Caranthir swordsman that he is draws aims and makes the killing thrust 

and Eskel ruptures. 

it’s inside

he’s inside

and Eskel can’t remember when he stops fighting. 

time narrows

time stops. 

Time is this. The world tightens into stone walls, shadows and this.

He’s reduced, too. Less than an animal-- a dominated body. A hole. 

The shadow of his own head jerks on the wall. Caranthir yanks his head up whenever it sags. He sees their shadows their shadows their shadows. His wrists shackled together in front of him. No swords, no Signs, powerless.

Things happen to him. He can’t get them all straight but he remembers how it ends. Caranthir’s rolled him onto his back so he can get a good look. Eskel’s biting down on his own ripped shirt. It’s packed so tightly in his mouth, he almost chokes. Caranthir pulls out and finishes on his stomach with a groan. There’s a ghost of relief. 

The mage stares down at his artistic contribution to Eskel’s torso. Then Caranthir’s hand wafts over them both and that obscene splatter starts to burn. Nothing like before-- this is just a tease of pain, a reminder. It’s over in seconds and when Eskel looks down at himself, the patterns of Caranthir’s seed have been branded into his stomach. Threads, splatters, and droplets scarred dark blue. 

Caranthir’s fingers trace the ridges of Eskel’s newest scars. “There,” Caranthir says, still a little out of breath. “You will remember this.” 

That hand traces up Eskel’s stomach, chest, neck, cheek to grasp a fistful of his hair, force him to look into that beautiful cruel smile with its ice blue eyes. “I own you.”

Eskel tries to snarl into the gag but it’s weak, pitiful. It makes Caranthir smile as his other hand glides along Eskel’s hip to wrap warm and firm around Eskel’s cock. 

It ends but it never ends. It loops back on itself. It restarts in the wrong places. It happens backwards. It layers: he’s gibbering, biting down on fabric wet with spit, ungagged and biting down what Caranthir wants to hear. He’s bent over with his stomach on the pallet, he’s on his back. But he keeps coming back to the moment he’s bent over, feeling the brush of Caranthir’s thighs against the back of his and the scrape of dimeritium shackles that won’t give and the mage is commanding him, entreating him, ordering him to beg. He’s laid open for the pain that he’s helpless to stop. Here it comes. 

**=======================================================================================**

Eskel’s trembling. His body isn’t enough to hold everything that happened. It oughta shatter under this much pressure, like a Quen shield under a rock troll’s fist. It doesn’t and he doesn’t and damn is that a shame. Would be a kindness now for the gods to dissolve him. 

He’s seen it, on the Path. Usually after delivering bad news-- sorry, ma’am, a werewolf’s killed your husband. Apologies, sir, the grave hag got your boy. They’ll look at him and tell him it isn’t true while the news works its way inside. When it hits, they tear along invisible seams and come apart. They sob like organ meat split under a dull knife-- wretched to watch, visceral. 

Usually, others swoop in to take care of them. He watches the destroyed soul get taken away. Then someone else steps in with his coin and he’s got other things to think about. 

He wonders what it’s like to be someone who can break. To give pain its due.

Where he is, there is no time. It will never end. He’s snared and quartered. And even here, something mountain-root quiet waits in the darkness behind thought. He can’t reach deep enough to hear it but he knows it’s there, untouchable but unkillable too. A primeval hum beneath the pulses of his heart, which shudders and breaks and keeps on beating.

* * *

The wooden door crackles with the energy of the Yrden sign. For some reason, this makes Yennefer remember that she’d intended to bring a plate of food. Damn it. She’s seen the witchers eat-- which bloody idiot designed a witcher fortress requiring a hike up fourteen flights of stairs to get from the kitchen to the private quarters? 

Briefly she considers opening a portal to the kitchen and collecting a plate of bread and that sheep’s cheese that Eskel devours by the block when he’s drunk. Geralt only started the venison a few minutes ago and it won’t be ready for a while yet. Something shuffles within the room, beyond the Signed door, and it occurs to Yen that Eskel’s witcher hearing must have made him very much aware of her presence already. Alas for him, cheese must await a more opportune time.

Yen clears her throat. Naught moves within. 

“Eskel?” she says.

A pause, then: “Yen?”

“No, it’s a doppler in the form of Kaer Morhen’s most beautiful guest. Ciri excluded,” she adds magnanimously. 

The sound of footsteps approach the door. The Sign dissolves, the door opens, and there stands the former most eligible bachelor of Kaer Morhen. He’s not in his best form, though. Yennefer notes the dark rings around his eyes, their haunted cast as they fall somewhere to her knees.

“Two Yens,” Eskel says to her knees. “Wonder if that counts as cheatin’.” A valiant hint of a smile alights briefly on his lips before departing. 

“Now, Eskel. Getting greedy?” 

Yen smiles though the expression’s wasted. Eskel doesn’t see it. His gaze has fallen to the floor as if his eyes are too heavy to lift. He tightens his lips a moment and grunts a low note as his only response. 

Eskel. Dear Eskel. What did they do to you? 

“May I come in?” Yen asks.

Eskel’s eyes lift to her waist before falling to the floor again. “If you want.”

“No.” She wants to touch him. A human touch poses too great a potential risk if he doesn’t want it, though, so she compromises by laying her hand against the stone wall next to the doorframe. “If _you_ want me to come in.”

Eskel stares at nothing. His eyes are so far away. 

“Yeah. ‘course you can, Yen.” His tone doesn’t sound convincing but he backs away from the doorway, sweeping his arm within in what should be a gesture of welcome, but he lets his arm go limp before it finishes. 

“Why, thank you.”

Yen shuts the door behind her. Eskel flinches. It’s subtle but there, so immediately she tsks. “Dreadfully hot in here. Are you intending to bake pies in the fireplace?” She opens the door again-- for circulation, of course. His eyes skitter but his shoulders ease just a tad. It helps that the room is, in fact, hot. Eskel’s piled a truly ludicrous amount of wood in the fireplace, and the room blazes like a blacksmith’s forge. 

“Geralt say somethin’?” Eskel says. He sinks down onto the bed, which is piled with half of the fortress’ pillows. It had seemed all they could offer, last night. 

“Should he have?” Yen pulls a chair near the bed, close enough that one of them can reach the other if they lean forward. 

Eskel shrugs, looks away.

“Our valiant white knight made a great many comments. On the state of Zoltan’s progress, for instance, and the availability of salted pork, and whether there are any silver swords of an appropriate size for Ciri.”

“Hn.” The phantasmal smile makes a brief return. “Still got her wooden sword around somewhere. From when she was a kid.”

“Ha! So she’ll be a true witcher at last, with two swords on her back. Steel for humans, wood for…”

Yen waits for him to offer his own witticism. He’s staring into space again. 

“...beavers,” she finishes softly.

Eskel doesn’t react. She traces him with her eyes. The marks on his wrists are clean, but still reddened and rubbed raw. He hasn’t taken Swallow. 

“I came up,” Yen says, “because I heard you.” 

That gets a reaction. His eyes flare wide and meet hers at last but they don’t belong in Eskel’s face. They’re flat, angry, pupils narrowed to slits against viper yellow.

“Get out of my head, Yen.” 

“I wasn’t reading you. And I _will_ not, without your permission. I promise you that.” Yen keeps her voice calm even as those stranger’s eyes glare at her from the face of her newest lover. “Eskel. Magically speaking-- you were _shouting_.”

The appropriate term is screaming. She sacrifices precision for kindness. 

Some of the fire in Eskel’s eyes dampens. “Shouting.” He looks away, then back at her. “What was I shouting?”

This time he maintains a steady gaze and she’s the one who must look away. 

Shall she tell him: you were screaming over and over again: _no_. You forget how you emanate, Eskel. How you project. By the lake, drowners and grave hags tilted their heads. Just as Avallac’h did. How he blanched to hear you. You would be ashamed to know it and I will protect your witcher’s pride, but secretly, I am glad of the shame I saw in his face. Is that terrible? 

Yen has the lie ready in her mouth. Impossible to tell, she’ll say, it was simply an emotional projection. Eskel has only the rudimentary magical training offered to witchers, though he might’ve made a fine mage in another life. He won’t know.

But when Yen meets those eyes, they’ve softened. Eskel possesses a brow ridge that’s excellent for glowering. It’s melted now into an expression that even Geralt and Yen see rarely: vulnerability. This is the man who risked his life for Ciri, though she is not his Child of Surprise. He has always been the one to come to Yen’s room with a bottle of wine after she and Geralt fight, to challenge Geralt to a horse race or some other equally virile pursuit when he’s sulking. Shall she lie to him?

Yen meets Eskel’s eyes. “It was the same word repeated.” She leans her weight forward in the chair, lays her hand slowly and gently on the mattress next to him so he can see every inch of her movement. “I’m sorry.” 

Eskel looks down at her hand. The muscles in his forearms tighten and his lungs draw in a deep, slow breath. What is his lung capacity? He inhales and inhales. 

“Yeah,” he says, and his breath tremors as he releases his endless breath. 

They’re both quiet.

“Who did it to you?” Yen says, gentle as she so rarely is. 

Eskel stares down at her hand. His thick shoulder twitches. 

“You don’t need to tell me.” Yen leans forward another inch but doesn’t move the hand lying next to him on the bed. “But you may find it helps.” 

He’s staring, as still as stone. The enormous fire crackles, the only sound in the stiflingly hot room. She has a stray thought to cast a spell to discourage sweating. 

“Mage.” The word’s a regurgitation. It must taste of bile. 

“Caranthir?”

His head sinks in a slow nod. 

Yen develops a sudden professional interest in seeing Caranthir suffer, but bloody thoughts must wait another time. Eskel is talking, letting out words that have gathered like poison in his blood. She’ll cup her hands and draw it from him, drop by drop. 

“He…” 

Yen hesitates. It is important to give these matters the right words and call them by their name. Unspoken harms fester in the heart and turn all they touch to withered, sickened things. The right words, though-- not _violate_ , not _forced himself_. No. They have each lived a century in this bitter world. They know the right name. 

“He raped you.” 

Eskel shudders. 

“Eskel.” Yen grips the mattress next to him. 

His head drops, a sudden jerking movement. He’s breathing like a winded horse. But he doesn’t move away from her hand.

“Eskel, I need you to listen to me now. You survived.” Yen’s voice hardens. “Caranthir is the commanding mage of the Wild Hunt. Their chief navigator. He has invaded countless worlds and commands power that would make our Lodge of Sorceresses swoon with envy. You were held captive, alone, by one of the most powerful mages to walk this or any other world-- and you survived. Whatever you did in order to survive, it was the right choice. Do you understand me?” 

Eskel’s staring at the floor. 

Yen almost misses it at first-- the slow movement of his hand from his lap. No, now she’s certain. His hand moves to hers on the mattress. Thick calloused fingers wind around her palm. She squeezes back. 

“You’re alive,” Yen says. “You came back to us.” 

Eskel’s face doesn’t so much as twinge, but he squeezes her hand. 

“Dunno if I have.” 

Yen rises from the chair. She moves slowly and gently to the bed, sitting down at Eskel’s side but leaving a few inches between them. Only their knees and hands touch. 

“Try this with me,” she says. “A thought exercise. Where are we now?”

Eskel’s lip quirks but his face has been so immobile, that’s a good sign, too. “Guestroom. Kaer Morhen.”

“Where is that? Region and province.”

“Morhen Valley. Blue Mountains. Kaedwen.”

“How far a ride to the nearest village?” 

Eskel tells her without hesitation. She accepts the answer though she has no idea herself. Why ride when one can merely open a portal?

“How far a ride to Rhys-Rhun?”

He blinks. “Why would anyone go to Rhys-Rhun?”

“I’m asking the questions here, witcher.” 

That keeps Eskel busy. His eyebrows furrow and after a time, he gives her another answer whose veracity she cannot confirm but appears to be the result of considered calculation.

“What can you hear?”

“You talking.”

“Ha, ha. Do better. Go on, show off that famous witcher hearing. Seven things you hear.”

He frowns. “The fire goin’,” he says after a moment. Yen holds up another finger with every sound he names. “Birds outside. Your heartbeat. Your breathin’. That counts separately. Spoon against a pot. Someone’s cooking. Hm. Wind through that broken window in the south tower. And-- a boom.”

“Boom?” 

“Magic boom.” Eskel shrugs. “Ciri makes it when she’s trainin’.”

“Wonderfully done,” Yen says. “You do honor to the School of the Wolf. Let’s try another sense, shall we? What can you smell?”

Eskel raises his eyebrows, looks at her. An excellent sign but Yen merely raises her eyebrows the way Tissaia did when her pupils were too slow for her liking. 

“Woodsmoke,” he says obediently. “Ash and oak. Don’t like using the pine. Too messy. Lilac, gooseberries.” A small, lingering smile. “Dust. Oughta shake out some of these pillows. Hm. Somebody cookin’ venison?”

“Why, yes.” She’ll never get used to this party trick. “Why? Are you hungry?” 

Eskel blinks several times. “Guess I am.” 

He’s Yrdened himself into this room for the past several hours. Of course he’s hungry. She’s surprised he hasn’t eaten the pillows by now, dusty or not. 

“Well. We can’t let Geralt give himself a stomachache again, can we? Unless we were all so fond of Lammas, we’d like to repeat it?” 

Eskel grins, wide and genuine. “Bet they’re still findin’ bits of Geralt’s guts in strange places.” He shakes his head. “The tavern roof. How?”

“Exactly. And the roof of this fine fortress is considerably higher. Shall we?” 

Eskel doesn’t budge. He looks at her, recognizably himself again, but there’s still a hint of haunting there. 

“Yen. I meant it. Don’t go into my head.”

“I know you meant it. I mean it, too, when I gave my reply.”

His eyebrows crease. “Then… how did…”

It’s so tempting to reach into his mind and pluck the rest of his sentence out. That’s even helped him, in the past, words not being the primary strength of witchers. Yen holds back and guesses like an ordinary person: “How do I understand?”

Eskel grunts in confirmation even as his eyebrows wrinkle. He’s guessing an answer he doesn’t like. 

Yen tilts her head back and hums. “As a man of experience, Eskel, you may look at me and recognize a sorceress of considerable power who should not be trifled with. Unfortunately, many men lack your powers of observation. To them, I am simply another woman. And such men tend to hold certain ideas regarding a woman’s proper place.”

“They do,” he says, watching her. 

“In some cases, other forms of power may… compound that.” Yen lifts her chin. “Tell me. Has Geralt ever told you about the sorcerer Vilgefortz?” 

“Not much.”

“Ah. Well.” Yen squeezes Eskel’s large hand one more time before releasing it. “Unimportant. Suffice it to say-- I know what power does to some men. Power or the need for power. I have paid the price of crossing their paths. And I have outlived them.” 

_Locations, Yennefer. Locations._

The owner of that voice is long dead. She’s gone years without remembering him or the cracks of pain in all her fingers. So much has happened in the years since, the memory is like an old portrait rediscovered in an attic, faded and made oddly marvelous by the passage of time. That had been her? That happened? 

Yen lets a remembered fire flicker in her eyes as she looks at Eskel. “You will outlive him, too.” 

Eskel meets her gaze and something flickers in the yellow of his eyes, too-- the spirit of a man who stood alone when Caranthir portaled in and raised his sword anyway. A man who can survive this.

“But not if you starve to death first.” Yen rises from the mattress. “Come to dinner, Eskel.” 

He hesitates. “Geralt plannin’ to use any spices? Might be better off chewin’ a live rabbit.”

“Fear not,” Yen says as he rises. “Nothing a little culinary illusion can’t improve.”

She slips her hand into the crook of his arm. Eskel flicks a reverse Igni over his shoulder and the raging inferno in the fireplace winks out. 

* * *

Give him space, Yen had said. Don't push him. Don't make him talk if he doesn't want to talk but if he wants to talk, listen. Help him feel safe.

Okay, Geralt had said. So how exactly do I do that?

He's your brother, she'd said. You know him better than anyone alive.

Anyone dead, too, Geralt had said.

It's true but not simple. This morning, after Eskel disappeared on one of his long walks alone, Geralt and Yen leaned together and let out a long shared sigh. Eskel isn't a burden. Both of them would wince at the word. But there's a weight to him now, some struggling monstrous thing that he tries to restrain, the way Eskel always does, except this one's too big to cage. It comes out sometimes, snapping bared teeth-- a sudden sharp comment, a dark look, a motion or gesture that's too forceful. Sometimes it's that long deep stillness, not calm like meditation, but lurking, ominous. Depths where monsters dwell. They'll see him staring into space, come back half an hour or an hour later and find him in the same position. When he's like that, he doesn't even notice them. It makes something grow in them, too. A darkness that drains. 

Geralt watches it as the days pass. Yen chides him, tells him that these things take time. They can catch him if he falls, help him rest between bouts, but in the end it’s his fight alone.

She doesn't understand. It's not supposed to be this way between them. The Trials, the first years on the Path, the siege, Deidre, Ciri-- they've always carried each other. 

Where Eskel is now, Geralt can't follow. 

It gives Geralt thoughts that unbalance him. He wants Yen to portal them into Tir na Lia, find Caranthir, kill him now and have done with it so Eskel can get better already, gods damn it. When Eskel’s staring into space, Geralt wants to push him against a wall and shout loud enough to break through the stupor _let me in, talk to me damn it. Let me help. We’ll beat this together, we always have._

If Eskel is talking to anyone now, though, it’s Yen. That’s not a bad thing. Good that he’s talking to someone, can grate open the stone door of his heart and let something out.

It should be Geralt. 

None of this is the way it should be. 

* * *

They're sitting in the kitchen, faces flushed with Lambert’s homemade vodka and the heat of the fire, and Eskel thinks of asking her to stay with him tonight. Yen’s beautiful. A man oughta know poetry for an occasion like this-- the occasion of knowing Yen, and wanting to talk about her properly. But Eskel can’t ever seem to hold it in his head. 

He remembers the first illustration of an ekimmara that he’d ever seen. _Hartwin’s Notes_ , too terse to be called a proper bestiary. The man hadn’t had much to say, but he could draw. Eskel has scoured the keep’s collection of tomes where they’re stacked under the part of the roof that never leaks, but he’s never found that book again. Yet as many times as he’s read the copies of Dandelion’s work that Geralt foists upon him, Eskel can’t remember a single phrase. It’s too delicate, poetry. It never lasts a day on the Path.

But look at her. Violet eyes, smile that’s both coy and so forward it could make an old man blush. None of the phrases he knows can do her justice. 

And the room’s empty, upstairs. Big and lonely. He hadn’t been able to stand the thought of another heartbeat last night but with the sound of her breathing and the scent of lilac and gooseberries in the air, maybe he won’t need the touch of stone walls against his back. 

_Stay with me tonight._ Eskel hears how he’d say the words, feels how they’d pass through his throat. 

Yen’s not reading him now. She tosses her dark hair over her shoulder and smiles at Geralt, who’s telling her why the mural of George of Kagen has an oddly dark spot in the lower left corner. Good story, always gets a laugh. Eskel usually laughs too and he wants to. 

It’s that they don’t have to fight for it. Geralt’s smile spreads easy, Yen’s hand drifts so naturally to Geralt’s thigh. They’re living in a world where that’s normal. Grief’s still hanging heavy over Geralt, bowing his shoulders forward with its weight. Eskel wouldn’t know it except he’s spent nine decades with his man. Knows the tilt of Geralt’s shoulders when they’re hunched against the rain, curled in sleep, bending over a pot of bone broth, leaned forward in the saddle, arching upward to meet the trace of Eskel’s fingers down his back. They’re weighed down and even under that weight they’re shaking in laughter for Yen. For the woman they’re both too crude for, but she stays with them anyway. 

His lovers. Funny world. Look at them. Imagine having the poetry for Yen. Enough ink to cover the years with Geralt. Imagine you weren’t so fucking filthy, that you deserved that kind of easy-flowing laughter and you had a place in their world. They’ve got a djinn wish binding them, a Child of Surprise. What do you offer? You can’t even defend yourself. You disgrace. You disgusting fucking ruin. 

_you’re no witcher you’re a hole for me to break_

and Eskel’s standing up. Too fast-- they both whip around to look at him and their eyes instantly change. 

“Not challenging me to a duel, are you?” Geralt smiles with darkened eyes. 

“Nah, nah. Heard the story one too many times and it’s puttin’ me to sleep.” Eskel can’t even make it sound like a joke. “Headin’ to bed. I, uh...” 

Yen’s looking at him. She promised not to read him and she isn’t, so she can’t know he’s thinking of the torchlight on the walls. The walls. The walls. That’s where he is. He doesn’t have any place in their universe, where time is still moving. 

“--could use the rest,” he finishes, and by the settling of their shoulders he knows they get the message: no company tonight. They can sleep together in the other guest bedroom in the unruined tower and wake up smelling like just the two of them again. 

“Eskel.” Yen’s looking up at him from beneath her lashes. “Have you taken any Swallow?”

Eskel glances at his wrist, knows it’s why she’s asking, quickly looks away. “I will,” he lies. 

“Got any?” Geralt asks.

“Plenty,” Eskel lies again. “Don’t worry ‘bout me. Enjoy the night, lovebirds.” He turns before either of them can say anything, grabs a half-empty bottle of vodka off the kitchen table as he goes. What’re they gonna do, tackle him? Ha, ha. No. He’s too fucking fragile for that. They won’t touch him. They shouldn’t. He’s the blackened toxin in a witcher’s veins after too many potions. He’s pollution. 

_there’s nothing you can do about it_ the air says, his veins say, his bones say, his torn-up still-bleeding hole says. That’s right. There’s nothing he can do. Eskel’s walking up the stairs to the room, swigging from the bottle as he goes. He’ll drink up until he can’t feel his body and doesn’t care what happens to it anymore. That’s how he’ll win. They might come for him and chain his wrists and bend him over, make him waiting helpless prey again, but joke’s on them: he’ll be so drunk he won’t feel a damned thing. He won’t even beg.

The fire’s gone out by the time Eskel gets into the room. _Leave it_ the mage’s voice says and Eskel has to obey. He’ll get burned open if he doesn’t, so the room stays dark. The bed’s still piled with blankets and pillows and his body’s so loose with booze, he’s a little sloppy as he heaves the mattress to the stone floor. The wooden frame is left exposed, a solid oak skeleton that’s a little too nice for the dungeons of Tir na Lia. Oh well. 

Eskel falls to his knees, bends himself over the wooden frame. The frame’s hard edge digs into his abdomen where magic has scarred red and blue splatters into him. Signs that he’ll never escape. 

_there’s nothing you can do_

There’s nothing he can do. Time’s stopped and the stone walls stand up before him dancing with torchlight and shadows and he can smell Caranthir’s sweat behind him. This isn’t something new to him. He’s been fucked before, just like this, bent over on his knees-- what difference does wanting it make? They’re just bodies. Drowner claws him, cock rapes him, what’s the difference? 

His wrists clamp together in front of him. The dimeritium’s heavy. It gnaws against his skin. So did that drowner that left the mark on his forearm, the werewolf that got him on the shoulder. The cuffs of Sad Albert trapping him in place as the Grasses convulsed him. His body has never been his. He has always been this helpless. He just didn’t know it. 

_Beg me_ , Caranthir says.

Why? Eskel wants to ask this time. Go ahead. Take what you want from me. Way it’s always been. But make it count. Gimme something new for my nightmares, or don’t waste my fucking time.

Caranthir obliges. 

There is no time. Even the walls fade. He jerks forward on the pallet bed frame. Just a body. The wood scrapes his branded stomach. There’s a rightness to this, a right fit to his body bent over, in position to be taken, except...

It doesn't hurt enough. Nothing’s inside him, tearing inward. A dissonance. The room’s dark. Eskel lifts his head, Caranthir is yanking it up by his hair, and he looks around for something suitable. To find his fit in time.

There’s a sound. Suddenly he remembers that he didn’t Yrden the door. 

Eskel has time to spin around, sit down with his ass on the floor and his back on the bare bedframe when the door rattles in its frame, Geralt is knocking so hard. 

“Eskel,” Geralt’s voice calls, “it’s us. Let us in.”

_there’s nothing you can do about it_

“Stop,” Eskel says aloud.

“Geralt,” Yen’s voice says, hushing him. She says louder: “Eskel, kindly don’t play the role of the stoic witcher tonight? I can’t have the two of you refusing to voice any emotion. It’s exhausting.” 

“Eskel.” Geralt’s voice is lighter now. “Yen wants to talk about feelings again. Help.”

Ha. Good luck with that one, Wolf. 

They could have just opened the door without asking. They haven’t and that is the only reason Eskel raises his voice and says, “Come in.” He doesn’t even bother to move as they come in, both of them pausing to squint at the bare bed frame and the sprawled mess of mattress, pillows, and blankets on the floor. Geralt casts Igni at the fireplace to give them all a better look. 

Yen tilts her head at him. “I would have sworn you’d make a better blanket fort than this.” 

“Not his fault,” Geralt says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Never got a chance to practice. They didn’t give us extra blankets when we were kids.” 

Geralt looks at him with warm eyes. They know they’re sharing the same memory: the two of them squeezing into the same bed, curling up so their bare toes won’t freeze from sticking out of the too-short blankets. It’s far away-- Eskel can barely reach into that other dimension where time is a thing that passes. All he can do is shrug. 

So without saying anything more, Geralt and Yen sit down on the floor next to him, backs against the exposed bedframe, one on each side. They both leave space between them so they aren’t actually touching. He wants them as far away from him as possible, or to wrap their warm bodies around him from both sides and let him breathe their mixed scents. Wants them close, wants them gone. 

Yen’s gotten hold of the vodka bottle. “I believe that’s quite enough for one night.”

“Speak for yourself,” Geralt says. “Gimme some of that.” 

She sighs but hands it over, leaning far in front of Eskel so her arm barely enters his personal space during the handoff. 

“Too many pillows?” Geralt asks after a swig.

“Too much everything,” Eskel says. 

They both incline their heads. 

“Talk to us, Eskel.” Yen’s voice is quiet but not delicate. Even her whispers can sound like commands. 

Eskel braces himself against the floor, exhales long. “Dunno if I can.” 

“He’s not coming back here.” Now she’s forged her voice into steel. “None of them will. I’ve thrown them off the scent and led them to think we’re on the move. Which-- we shall be, sooner or later.” 

“Good.” 

Geralt plays with the bottle. He presses it into thigh and they both watch, Eskel and Geralt, as he lifts it again. The impression of the bottle lingers in the fabric of his trousers, a dented circle. 

“Did they ask you anything?” Geralt says. His voice is grit. He keeps his viper eyes trained on the impression of the bottle’s base.

“No.”

Geralt blinks and his eyebrows lift. Not the answer he was expecting. “Nothing?”

“Just my name. He knew you. Knew I wasn’t you.” 

“No interrogation,” Geralt mutters, not asking who “he” is. He and Yen have been talking, which is all well and good. Saves Eskel his breath and the trouble. “So the point wasn’t to get information. It was just torture.” Geralt’s grip tightens on the bottle. “Sadistic degenerates.” 

“Torture...” Eskel considers the word. It’s lighting up places of recognition for him. He doesn’t want to think of them now, though. He’s trying to come back from those other stone walls, to push time forward again. “Yeah. Yeah, sounds ‘bout right.” 

“It’s over now,” Yen says. “We’re safe here, for a while yet. Until you’ve gathered your strength and Ciri is ready.”

“And then what?”

“And then we take the fight to the Hunt.”

“And make them pay,” Geralt adds. 

Everything’s distant and muted but the thought is delirious enough to spin in Eskel’s head. Watching the Wild Hunt die on Geralt’s sword or Ciri’s, or Yen’s spells-- the new thought that they’re not unyielding forces built to hold him down, make him helpless-- they’re just bodies. Bodies can be hurt. Can be killed. 

“Lost my swords,” Eskel says. “They took ‘em.”

“We’ll get you replacements,” Geralt says.

“Silver one, too? Gonna get Zoltan to excavate the armory?”

“No need. Found an extra. Show you soon.” Geralt’s hand lifts, hesitates midair. He wants to touch Eskel. His hand curls into a loose fist that knocks against the stone floor next to him instead. 

“A’right.” 

“As for tonight,” Yen says, “I’m disinclined to leave you alone again.”

“Oh yeah?” Eskel asks.

“Don’t fight her,” Geralt mutters. 

“Listen to our White Wolf. He’s not as befuddled as he appears.”

Geralt’s brow furrows but Eskel smiles. He’s a little surprised to feel it on his own face. “Oh, I know.”

Yen’s smiling, too. “We can bring up a separate bed,” she says.

Geralt groans. “We” has a low chance of including anyone but him. 

Eskel rubs his free hand over the top of his thigh. His body is here, solid at the moment. “Think we’d fit on this one.”

He looks at Yen. She’s quirking an eyebrow. Geralt stirs on his other side. Makes sense that it catches them off guard. Must’ve spooked Geralt earlier with the wargs, and when Geralt had tried to touch him with no warning. The Terror had jolted through him, no warning, no give. It’s still there, quiet in its cave for now, but it’s quieter when they’re around. The two of them. And if it does come roaring awake and narrows his mind into primitive animal panic, might be they can bring him back.

“Think it’d be a’right,” Eskel says. Hesitates. “You in the middle, Yen.” 

They get the message. He can’t touch Geralt yet. Wants to but something’s too close-- the hair on his arms, the strong masculine tang in his scent, his pale skin. He imagines it and can feel the Terror shift somewhere in its depths. 

Yen lifts her chin. “Promise not to hurl us to the floor?”

“Hmm.” Eskel looks at the ceiling as if figuring a complex equation. “If Geralt doesn’t snore-- a’right.” 

“I don’t snore,” Geralt says. 

Eskel and Yen both chuckle, and they only get louder with Geralt’s sounds of protest.

* * *

Geralt snores. He didn’t always. Slept quiet until sometime in his fifties. Then one night he pounded too much White Gull and he’s snored like a sawmill ever since. One of those medical mysteries. He’s curled up on his side, back towards them and snoring at the door. 

Eskel rolls his head on the pillow so he can look at the ceiling again. Yen nestles her head into the crook of his shoulder. She’s so much smaller than the two witchers, petite, delicately boned like no creature that’s roamed Kaer Morhen before. He wraps his arm around her shoulders, lets the bulk of his arm rest on her slender back.

“Go to sleep,” Yen murmurs against his chest.

“I am asleep,” Eskel mutters back.

Her arm reaches across his shoulder to lie across his chest. 

“Sleep harder,” she murmurs. 

Yen’s good to obey, even if that’s more Geralt’s thing. He wants to obey her. Has found out he _can_ obey but isn’t sure he likes it. 

This is good, though. The three of them in one bed again. The familiar smells and heartbeats. Should be like this all the time. The three of them together and in the morning, pillows lined with dark raven hair and silvery white hair and 

rot and mold because he’s _no witcher_ he’s _a hole for_ \--

Eskel flinches, lets out a choked nothing sound. Yen lays her thigh across his thighs, wraps around him with her arm and leg and lifts her palm to his scarred cheek. 

“It’s alright,” she whispers, her breath wispy against his ear. “You’re with us. You’re not alone.”

He doesn’t reply, just holds her closer to him. 

They lie awake awhile to the rumble of Geralt’s snores. 

* * *

Eskel takes to helping Zoltan with the excavation of the courtyard. He doesn’t know much about stonework. Anything, in fact. Luckily, Zoltan doesn’t need an apprentice, just an extra set of hands sturdy enough to haul blocks of obliterated stone. The dwarf keeps up a genial stream of chatter throughout the process. He doesn’t seem to mind when Eskel gives the wrong responses, answering “yes” to questions like “how is it you keep yourselves fed in winter?” and “not bad” to questions like “was ol’ Geralt always such a hardtacked curmudgeon?” It’s the rhythm of the work that Eskel needs, brutal and mechanistic. Take a stone and carry it. Simple work that his traitor body manages well and a wholesome soreness afterward.

When the gateway is cleared, though, Zoltan still doesn’t leave Kaer Morhen. “Some work I’ve yet to finish, lad,” he says, and vanishes into the remnants of their forge. 

* * *

Yen’s upstairs with a pile of books and several arch comments about better things that Geralt could do besides bothering her, Avallac’h and Ciri are out portaling rocks into lakes or whatever they do in training, and Zoltan’s hammering away at the project Geralt’s given him. Always has been a good friend, Zoltan. He’s the steadiest of those remaining at the keep, the least likely to cause trouble over breakfast. 

That leaves Eskel. Geralt finds him easily enough. The other witcher’s still sitting at the breakfast table, a bowl of cold congealed kasha sitting neglected on the table in front of him. He’s staring into space. 

The urge to shake him returns. Geralt takes himself to the storeroom instead, picks out two wooden training swords. He comes back to the kitchen to find Eskel hasn’t budged.

“Look alive, witcher.” Geralt thunks one of the training swords down on the table, next to the half-full bowl. “Time for training.”

Eskel starts, shakes his head. “What’s this? Feelin’ nostalgic?”

“Feeling bored. Come on.” Geralt taps the edge of his own wooden sword on the rim of the bowl. “Clean that up. Then we’re going outside.”

“Bored, huh.” Eskel’s still moving slowly. His fingers scrape at the bristles that have grown wild on his chin. “Can’t go fishin’ or--”

“Said I’m bored, not masochistic. Come on.” Geralt backs up and whirls the wooden sword around in theatrical challenge, like when they were kids. “‘’less you’re worried you can’t beat me?”

Eskel lifts his eyes. Geralt’s known them all his life and they’ve never looked like this-- like Eskel’s an empty pitcher, his insides poured out. 

“Today?” The husk that is Eskel attempts a smile but it’s just another hole in his face opening into nothing. “It’d be you, hands down.” 

Fuck. That bad.

Geralt lays his wooden sword down on the table and sits across from Eskel. “Got a better plan for your day? Too busy with meetings?” 

Eskel shrugs one shoulder, not looking at him. “Just don’t feel like playin’ with toys.” His voice is bitter. Is he thinking about Caranthir? The battle? 

“Good thing about training swords-- don’t have to suit up. Could hit me as hard as you want.”

“You in the mood for a spanking, talk to Yen.”

That’s a little better. “She’s busy.”

“Ah. Got it. So you come to your second choice.”

Geralt plants his palms on the table. _“Eskel.”_

Eskel still isn’t looking at him. 

They had a rhythm, once. In winter, Geralt would spend the day’s chores thinking about Eskel. They’d catch each other’s eyes over dinner after spending the day apart, and nothing would change in their conversation. They didn’t use codewords, secret nods, little signals. They’d clean up and leave the kitchen the same as any other night, except they’d find each other. Along the battlements, in little half-collapsed rooms tucked into the deserted sections of the keep-- once in the stables-- something that wasn’t completely Geralt or Eskel pulled them toward each other and came alive when they were together. Even on the Path, it works its inexplicable magic. Geralt finds himself pulled toward nothing towns with no prospect of work and finds Eskel camped out there, as if waiting for him.

Geralt strains for the rhythm now. He’s never needed to ask where they keep it. He doesn’t know where to listen. 

Alright. If it isn’t there, he’ll try something else. 

“Eskel. What are you?”

The strangeness of the question gets his attention. Eskel’s eyebrow inches upward. Looks annoyed more than anything. “Kinda question is that? Gettin’ philosophical on me?”

“No. Getting real with you. What are you? An elf? A chort? A sorceress?”

A little life stirs in the yellow eyes. “A… witcher.”

“That’s right. What do witchers do?” Geralt gives his voice a familiar pedantic gravitas, though his impression will never beat Lambert’s. “Wallow by the fire, flush with the arrogance of past victories? Spoil his reflexes with the twin vices of ale and rich food?”

It’s a real smile this time. “Nay,” Eskel says in his own mimicry of Vesemir’s voice, though he’s less committed to the role. “Like all masters, a witcher devotes himself continuously to the betterment of his craft.”

Geralt pounds the table with his fist. “You’re damned right,” he says in his own voice. “We’re witchers. We train. Time both of us got back to what we should be doing.” 

“With toy swords?”

“We restart training with training tools,” Geralt says, echoing Vesemir’s words but not his voice. “And when you know the meaning of a sword in a witcher’s hand…”

Eskel’s furrowed eyebrows slacken and go smooth. “...only then can you take up steel or silver.”

Geralt stands, takes hold of one of the wooden swords. Looks down at the haunted body. I know you’re in there, Eskel. Come on. Come out. 

“Get up, witcher,” he says. 

Eskel’s eyes drop. He’s not going to take the challenge. Whatever demon lives inside him has coiled around him and dragged him to the bottom of the sea. He’ll drown down there.

Eskel’s eyes focus on the unclaimed training sword. The grip, designed for smaller and younger hands. It is nearly lost in his palm when he takes hold of it. 

He hefts it experimentally. “Might have better luck with the kitchen spoons,” Eskel says.

The eruption of breath from Geralt’s chest might be a chuckle, or relief from so far deep it’s halfway to a sob. “Try these first,” he says. “And when you snap ‘em both with your little love taps, we’ll come back for the spoons.” 

Eskel breaks his training sword on Geralt’s shoulder within the first thirty seconds. They switch to two steel blades from the storeroom after that, though they have to go easy with real weapons. None of the spare pieces of armor in the keep fit Eskel’s shoulders. 

* * *

Eskel can’t lie down on his stomach. If he does, those other walls appear. His wrists lock together and sag under the weight of dimeritium. His body closes around him like a trap.

He has to lie on his back, where only the mattress can press against his hips. 

Eskel wakes gasping from sleep sometimes, wakes himself with _no_ still a desperate echo in the room. Yen won’t say anything, Geralt won’t say anything. He can hear the moment that Geralt’s snores stop. The three of them lie there breathing, too dark to see anything-- but their heartbeats, breaths, the shift of bodies against bedsheets, that’s enough. The Terror bares its teeth but loosens its grip on his heartbeat, slinks back into its darkness.

One time, a bad time, Eskel sits upright clawing at his stomach. He can’t get it off. Yen warms his stomach with her palm and she doesn’t say anything but a shimmering blue sphere arcs into being around the bed, a smaller version of the shield she’d lifted over all of Kaer Morhen. The surface ripples, oceanic. 

“Sh,” Yen says. Geralt’s still snoring. Eskel lies down again and she wraps her arms around him.

Another time, Eskel rises out of sleep in jagged bursts. The jerk of his own shoulders against the pillows wakes him. When he opens his eyes, he can see the curves of Yen’s breasts and the delicate lines of her neck in the soft golden light. Quen circles the bed, tight, protective. There’s no sound of snoring.

Eskel closes his eyes, enveloped in the shields of his lovers. He tells himself the story that he hopes to believe someday: he’s safe now, safe enough to relax the restless animal vigilance that has been his constant companion. He can rest. 

* * *

Eskel’s practicing in the courtyard. They trained here for years. That’s what he wills himself to hear: Varrin’s commands, Vesemir’s reprimands, the sound of steel and wooden swords crashing together. The Wild Hunt’s invasion

(invasion)

was a moment and the moment’s passed. Over gone done. 

Too bad about his sword, though. He misses his steel sword. Had plans for runic engraving once he raised a little more coin. 

Geralt finally shows up. He’s missing his sword strap. Eskel bumps the sheath on his own back, slides the blade home blindly, through practiced movement alone, and hears the steel sliding into place behind him. There’s nothing but a witcher’s sword lying against his back. His back. His--

“Stealin’ a lil’ time with Yen?” Eskel asks.

Geralt grimaces. Eskel scents the air out of habit and, no, this morning the White Wolf doesn’t smell like sex. “Not today. Her books are stealing more time than I am.”

Eskel grunts. He’s noticed. “What’s she doing, anyway? Didn’t know there were any book clubs out here.”

Geralt looks away. Eskel wonders yet again how he manages out there on the Path. Man might as well have a herald announcing his thoughts.

“Come out and say it, Wolf.” Eskel crosses his arms over his chest.

“She’s… researching.”

“Researching what?”

Geralt’s shoulders drop ever so slightly. “Magical scar removal.”

Ah.

Eskel looks over the battlements. The Pendulum, of all things, still stands intact. Between the Samovila and the Wild Hunt, you think someone would’ve wrecked the damned thing by now. “Nice of her. Tell her not to strain herself.”

“Tell her yourself.”

“She doesn’t listen to me.”

“Think she listens to me?”

They grin at each other. 

“We sure know how to pick ‘em… don’t we, Wolf?”

“I picked her. Give me a little credit.” Geralt’s grin tilts treacherously close to a smirk. “But pretty sure she picked you, as I remember it.” 

Eskel shrugs and lets out a hint of a cocky smirk himself. “Why stick with the worse half of a package deal?”

“Oh, that’s low.”

“Like your standards ‘fore I rehabilitated you?”

“ _You_ rehabilitating _me_. You’re lying as much as Dandelion.”

Eskel shrugs. “Wouldn’t know. Don’t lie much with humans, myself.”

“You--”

Geralt lifts his hand but Eskel’s already cast Quen. The Aard blast slides harmlessly around Eskel’s shield. 

He tsks. “Poor geezer. Slowin’ down in your old age.”

“Don’t start with that.”

It’s normal. They’re talking so fucking normal and it lets Eskel breathe again. For the first time in two weeks, Eskel imagines Geralt’s body close to his, not in combat but unarmored, skin to skin, and doesn’t recoil. 

“Can’t help it.” Eskel tilts his head. “Forgot to bring your sword to training?”

Geralt raises his empty hands. “Got a different plan for today.”

“Ooh. Big plans, huh.”

“Big plans.” Geralt nods. “Leave that rock here. I wanna show you something.”

Eskel lifts the sword strap over his head. “Should I be scared?” 

“Hope not, unless you like running around in a cuirass two sizes too small.”

Eskel perks up. “You found somethin’?”

“Come with me and see.”

Eskel follows Geralt through the keep. It’s quiet-- Avallac’h (the name doesn’t make him flinch as much these days) and Ciri are off in the mountains, Yen’s up with her books and now he knows why. There’s no sound of Zoltan hammering away or singing in dwarvish as he waits for metal to cool. Geralt takes them through a door that they hardly ever use. It opens up to a rise outside the keep, a narrow alpine meadow that’s bordered on two sides by the steep crags of the mountain and on a third by a steep drop to the valley below.

They climb up the low grassy rise. A rough canvas sheet covers the grass, bulging over a few odd lumps underneath. Eskel sniffs. The grassy ridge smells like flowers, snow, Geralt, leather-- and ash. A large fire burned here a couple weeks back. Now he spots it: a rectangle of burned grass to the side of the canvas sheet, where he can see a few ashen logs shining black and--

Bone? Incinerated bone? 

Eskel takes a sharp breath. “This is the old man.” 

Geralt inclines his head. “Yeah. We burned him here.” 

Eskel sinks to his knees at the edge of burnt grass. He was in Tir na Lia when they burned Vesemir. Must’ve been the night that--

Walls. Two shadows on the walls. No. Scents: grass, Geralt, ash, bone. He pushes the walls away.

The Wild Hunt. It’s taken enough from them. Taken Vesemir’s life. Taken Yen and then Geralt. Taken Eskel. They’re still out there in Tir na Lia, figuring out how to take Ciri. 

Eskel touches his fingers to one of the burnt logs. Ground into the dirt and grass is all that’s left of Vesemir. Didn’t see him fall. Didn’t get the chance to say goodbye.

Eskel inhales the scent of ash, of death, of everything the Wild Hunt’s taken. The scent wafts into him and his lungs take it into his blood, raging so his veins can barely channel it, and in that wake something stirs. Something inside him remembers itself. 

“Which one did it?” Eskel takes one of the pieces of burnt wood between his fingers.

“Imlerith. The general.”

“Imlerith,” Eskel repeats. “And Eredin’s the king.”

“Mm hm.”

“And then there’s-- Caranthir.” 

“Mm. The mage. The navigator.”

Eskel curls his fingers tight. The wood in his hand cracks into blackened splinters.

“Three contracts,” Eskel says. “You know the one I want.”

“All yours. Don’t have to take it alone. But when the time comes...”

“Mm hm. Which one you want?”

“Hm.” Geralt considers. “Imlerith. Remember him from my time with the Hunt. Got some scores to settle.”

“He’s yours.”

Geralt grunts. 

“And Eredin?”

“Don’t care, as long as he’s dead. Hm. Might be best if Ciri did it.”

“Ciri? Risky.”

“Mm hm.”

“A’right. Ciri. Or whoever gets there first.”

“Or whoever gets there first.” 

A contract. A hunt. Eskel remembers this. He _is_ this. It’s burning bright in his mind, chasing the fog before it.

“Got some work ahead of us,” Geralt says. “Can’t have you chasing the Wild Hunt in your linens. Think this’ll help.”

Geralt pulls away the canvas sheet, and Eskel falls back on his heels. Sitting there in the unburnt grass is a gambeson. Technically the first layer’s a quilted red aketon and on top of that, black brigandine. It’s sized broader than anything they’ve found in their search of the keep, and the metal hasn’t got a scuff on it. In fact, it looks brand new.

“Fuck, Wolf.” Geralt backs out of the way so Eskel can run his hands over his new armor. “Did you have Yen portal out to Novigrad for this?”

“Didn’t have to. Turns out we’ve got a blacksmith from Novigrad who happened to bring his tools.”

“Zoltan.” Eskel smiles. “So he’s been workin’ on this, all this time?”

Geralt bobs his head. “That, and emptying our store of venison.”

“Hmph.” Eskel brushes his thumb across the patch of chainmail riveted across the shoulders and chest of the gambeson. It’s solid work, heavier than his lost gambeson but sturdier, too. “Stonemason, demolitions man, and blacksmith. Where do I get friends like yours?”

“It’s a simple trick,” Geralt says. “Turns out you have to _talk_ to people to make friends with them.”

“Ah. Then forget it.” 

“Thought so.” 

Eskel sits back. Eyes Geralt. Geralt looks back at him.

“You shitheel,” Eskel says at last. “Now I gotta get you somethin’ nice for Yule.”

“Don’t worry about it. I know you’re a broke bastard.”

“And you’re an imperial lackey. Some of us gotta work for a living.”

“Speaking of,” Geralt says, in that smooth nonsense way he’s got of changing the subject, “think you’ll need a decent set of blades on the Path, too.”

The gambeson took up so much of his attention, it’s only now that Eskel’s gaze follows Geralt’s pointing finger to the two scabbards lying in the grass nearby. His breath catches.

“Wolf,” he nearly croaks, “you’re gettin’ dramatic.”

“What can I say? I’m learning to enjoy a little flair. Go ahead. They’re yours.”

Eskel crouches next to the sword strap, admires the two hilts. Unlike the gambeson, both the sword strap and the swords are well-used. Well-maintained, too: the leather smells old but it’s been conditioned regularly so the hide is still supple and smooth, uncracked. A veteran witcher lived by these blades. Must’ve died by them, too, if Eskel’s getting them now. Both carry the sign of their school: the pommel of the steel sword ends with the heads of two stylized wolves curled like horns, the silver with a round disk stamped with an inlaid wolf head. The designs are distinctive. He’s seen these before…

Eskel pulls the silver sword a few inches from its scabbard. The runes were engraved into the metal long ago, but they’re still sharp: _Lasair Uaine_. 

He slams the blade back into its sheath. “These were Vesemir’s.”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t take these.”

“Why not? Remember how long Vesemir spent maintaining these blades? Really think he’d want them moldering away in an abandoned ruin?” 

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

They should go to someone who deserves them, Eskel thinks. Who can wield them with honor. Honor’s a strange word to apply to witchers but the old man was from that time when it didn’t seem so strange. Eskel’s no champion. No one would have painted his mural on the walls of Kaer Morhen, even if he’d been born then. 

“Vesemir was a master,” Eskel says. “I ain’t a master.”

“No?” Geralt leans forward. A twinge of animal panic flits through Eskel’s mind at the movement but he contains it, puts it on a leash. “Who killed that old katakan lying in the main hall, then? Which of us fought one of the generals of the Wild Hunt and came out alive?”

Eskel can’t suppress the flinch. “Yeah. And then what happened?”

“Then you came back. And you took a contract for his head.” Geralt shifts positions somehow but Eskel doesn’t look at him. “Vesemir would want this, Eskel. His blades used against the Hunt, taking them down. That, or we leave them here and they rot. Think I know his preference. What do you think?”

These blades. They’re beautiful the way dragon’s teeth are beautiful: instruments honed to a point of lethal perfection. Eskel tests his grip on the steel blade, then the silver. His palm is hungry for them. He wants to feel their weight on his back. Wants to see the shining length of Lasair Uaine bury itself in Caranthir’s chest. 

“I’ll take care of ‘em,” Eskel says. “For the old man. Last thing I need, him guilting my ass.”

“That’s the spirit,” Geralt says. “Let’s see if it all fits you, what say? Before our blacksmith heads home?” 

“Yeah,” Eskel says. “Sure.” 

Geralt helps him put on the gambeson. Zoltan knows what he’s doing-- it’s snug in all the right places, no chafing under the armpits or pinching in the shoulders. Vesemir’s sword strap is next. They have to loosen the strap so it doesn’t constrict Eskel’s chest. When they’re done buckling, pulling, and muttering under their breaths at the leather straps, Geralt stands back. 

“There,” he says. “How’s that, witcher?”

Eskel looks down at himself, properly armored, the swords of a master witcher on his back.

“It fits.” 

* * *

It finally happens one snow-dusted afternoon. 

An early snow’s come to Kaer Morhen. Eskel’s on the balcony. The sound of laughter drew him and he watches as Ciri and Geralt pelt each other with snowballs. Ciri ought to be doing better-- she’s only using her teleportation to zip around the courtyard where Geralt can see her. Must be holding herself back so she doesn’t embarrass her old man. 

After watching Geralt take a snowball to the face, Eskel heads downstairs. 

He passes Ciri on the way in. She’s smiling, loose-limbed, calls him “Uncle Eskel” as she goes by looking for-- that elf. Eskel walks past her into the courtyard, sees Geralt leaning on the battlements and staring out over the valley. 

Geralt tilts his head at Eskel’s approach. “Come to enjoy the view?”

“Yeah,” Eskel says, and he leans in and kisses him.

Geralt starts. It’s a restrained jerk of his muscles that Eskel feels in the hand that he’s pressed against Geralt’s back. 

The smell of him. The familiar scent of Geralt that summons a calm steady flame in his mind like the glow of a hearth illuminating all within: comfort, safety, the return each winter to hands that will cup his face or grasp his shoulders and soothe him and calm him and make him feel good, and do not hurt him. Never have and never will. The callouses on those palms, the knobby knuckles at the end of slender fingers, the dumb scar on the back of Geralt’s hand that he got when they were kids and trying to raise a warg whelp in secret-- they’re landmarks, signposts, each a signal that Eskel has found his way to the end of all roads, the place where he can finally lay down his swords and rest. 

“Eskel,” Geralt breathes into his mouth.

And then they’re leaning into each other, the burdens of each melting into the arms of the other until there is no more history to dissolve between them. No more wandering from contract to contract, hallway to hallway. They’ve found each other again. 

* * *

Ciri tries not to curse as she stubs her toe against yet another wooden crate on her way to the kitchen. Each year, her uncles come and winter here. Why, then, does no one bother to clean up the bloody place? 

It will not matter once they leave the keep. She hasn’t been to Kaer Morhen in the better part of a decade but she’s imagined it often enough while wandering through other worlds. There aren’t many places she can think of as home. The witchers’ keep has been one of them. No more. 

And this is why she must do what she must do. 

Ciri slowly pushes the door to the kitchen open. The hinges let loose an abominable creak. She winces but valiantly opens it anyway, slipping through and sliding it closed with another bone-jarring squeak. Gods. Nevermind. Good riddance to this old moldering place.

She turns around with a sigh of relief only for air to return to her lungs in a gasp. The kitchen isn’t empty after all. A pair of yellow viper eyes shine at her from the long table. 

“Morning,” Eskel rumbles through a mouthful of bread. “You’re up early.”

“Morning, morning. I’d say the same of you.” Ciri lets out a huff of breath. 

“Nope. I’m up late.” Eskel slides the plate of bread toward her. At least, she thinks it’s bread. The fire’s low on the hearth and the sun hasn’t yet risen enough for much light to trickle through the windows. 

“Oh. Thank you. Ah! Damn it!” Ciri kicks away the chair that’s managed to get in the way of her shins. 

Eskel shakes his head. “Witcher’s first enemy. Kitchen furniture.”

“Don’t tempt me. I’ll manage a trophy off that wretched stool yet.” Ciri’s reached the table at last. She reaches blindly toward Eskel’s plate, finds what seems to be a hunk of goat cheese, and rips off a chunk to pop into her mouth.

“Goin’ somewhere?”

“Hrm?” she hums around a mouthful of cheese.

Eskel points at the satchel over her shoulder. “That bag. Not ‘xactly sleepwear.”

Ciri swallows. “Ah. Yes. Well.” 

Her uncle gazes at her calmly. She’s forgotten how witcher eyes catch and reflect ambient light like a cat’s. A useful if somewhat unsettling feature. Eskel looks much better these days, she thinks. He laughs again, keeps up with conversation. He still takes long walks alone, sometimes for hours at a time, but she no longer sees him hunched into himself, staring at nothing. 

Bravo to him, really. Ciri can’t remember how long it took for her to return to the world of other people after-- well, there have been so many afters. After the fall of Cintra, after that first time with Mistle, after Bonhart. Ciri hasn’t had much access to normal in her life. By now it feels like a fairy tale for someone whose life does not burst into flames or fall apart at the pluck of a harp string. In other words, for people unlike her and the witchers who raised her. 

Still, finding him here in the kitchen during her covert leavetaking is decidedly inconvenient.

Ciri squares her shoulders. “I’m leaving Kaer Morhen today, Eskel. There’s something that I must do.”

“Uh huh,” Eskel says. “Anyone else know ‘bout this thing you gotta do?”

“No.”

Eskel nods. “Must be important, then. You wouldn’t leave your mother and father hangin’ if it weren’t important.”

“Yes.” Ciri fiddles with the hilt of her dagger at her hip. “You’re not going to stop me?”

Eskel shrugs. “Why would I? Been hoppin’ between worlds since you were, what, sixteen? Must have some idea how to take care of yourself.”

“I’d like to think so.” It’s a relief, talking to him. “Not everyone would agree with you.”

“Yeah, well. Some people worry about you.” Eskel shrugs again. “Or else I’m clueless. What do I know? I kill drowners for a living. Never had a thing to do with the Wild Hunt before all this.”

“I’m sorry,” Ciri says softly.

“Hey.” Eskel leans forward and flattens his palm against the table. His voice grates more harshly. “It’s not your fault. You hear me, Princess? Don’t worry ‘bout us.”

“Hmph.” Ciri tosses her head. “I never did like that nickname.”

“More of a title, ain’t it?”

“That, either.”

“Could be worse. You remember your nickname for me?”

Ciri frowns. “Hm! No, actually. I had a nickname for you?”

“Heh. Forget it. You don’t remember, it never happened.”

“No, wait--”

“So,” Eskel cuts her off, “you gonna tell me where you’re goin’? This thing you gotta do?”

Ciri taps her dagger hilt and feels the weight of it jostling her hip. “You said you wouldn’t stop me.”

Eskel looks at her seriously. In this dim flickering light he resembles a creature from a story meant to frighten children-- a shadowy man with lambent demon eyes. “I won’t.”

Ciri takes a deep breath. “I’m going to kill Imlerith.” She tenses for his reaction. 

Eskel leans back in his chair. “Imlerith. That’s the one who did the old man.”

“He killed Vesemir. Yes.” 

“Mm. Got a plan?”

“Yes.”

“Good one? Plan for a safe exit, too?”

“Yes. I think so.”

He nods slowly. “A’right.”

“Is that it?”

“Yeah, that’s it. ‘cept for one thing.”

Ciri tenses anew. “Yes?”

“Take your dad with you.”

“Take Geralt? Don’t you think he’ll object?”

“Object.” Eskel huffs and leans forward again. “Remember, Ciri. The Hunt took Geralt tryin’ to bait you. Made ‘im run with them. Who knows what they did, what they made him do. When he got back here, he couldn't remember his own name. But he remembers Imlerith.” Eskel’s fingers tighten on the table. He’s thinking about something else, someone else. His voice remains steady, though. “Take ‘im with you, Ciri. Let him settle what there is to settle.” 

Ciri forces herself to breathe normally. She knew that the Hunt had come for Yen and Geralt. But what they did to Eskel-- she hadn’t made the connection. It wasn’t possible that they’d done it to Geralt-- to Yen-- was it? 

“Alright,” she says. “I’ll bring him. But you won’t tell Yen, will you? Or Avallac’h?”

“I will. But not ‘til you’re gone.”

Ciri breathes out. “Thank you, Eskel.”

“Ah, kid.” Eskel huffs a chuckle. “You wanna thank me-- just come back with your head on and his off. Or Yen’s gonna take mine.” He slides the plate toward her again. “And eat up. You’re not ‘bout to assassinate the Wild Hunt on an empty stomach.”

* * *

Eskel falls asleep at sunrise. When he wakes up, Ciri and Geralt are gone.

He tells Yen where they’ve gone. She takes the news with surprising calm. 

Yen tells Avallac’h. He does not. 

* * *

With the help of Yen’s portal, Zoltan and his collection of tools take the shortcut back to Novigrad. Zoltan slaps Eskel on the elbow in farewell, tells him he’s a good lad and to keep Geralt out of trouble. Eskel asks him if he’s met Geralt. That gets a big-bellied laugh out of Zoltan and Eskel decides instantly that they have to keep in touch. 

Avallac’h takes the portal shortcut, too. He and Yen make plans to meet at the Chameleon, which might be an inn or a brothel or a cabaret-- the explanation is a little confusing. Eskel’s sure about one thing: Geralt’s bard friend owns it. He prepares himself for the worst. 

Yen would prefer to portal to Novigrad, too, except there’s no way that he’s leaving Scorpion behind and there’s no way that she’ll let him travel by himself. Not right now, at least. So she portals her luggage to the Chameleon and saddles up Vesemir’s horse for the weeklong ride to Novigrad. It’s not her usual method of travel, so it’s up to Eskel to figure out the rations and the stops they’ll make along the way.

Closing up Kaer Morhen is lonely business. He’s done it with Vesemir at the close of the season, those spring days when the last of them have returned to the Path. But this is the first time he’s done it himself: closing and latching the windows, the doors, cleaning out the kitchen, locking the gates. When he douses the hearth fire, he stands awhile memorizing the grate, the stonework, in case it’s the last time he sees it.

Then they’re on the road headed south out of Morhen Valley, Eskel on Scorpion and Yen on Sor’ca. 

“How long in the saddle today?” Yen asks, resigned.

“Hm.” Eskel calls the map into his head. “‘Bout nine hours should do it, including a mid-day break. Stop, let the horses rest and drink, stretch our legs a bit. Know a decent inn just before Venngael. Cozy place, and means our first day’s a good start.”

“Ah. Delightful.” Her tone is anything but. 

It occurs to Eskel as they clop along that he has the whole route planned in his head-- good places for breaks and for rest, with different options depending on the weather. It’s what he always does when he sets out on the Path, but this is the first time he’s done it in weeks. The future has become tangible, containable with plans, resources, and educated guesses. 

Where he is, time has begun to move again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story will be split into three main sections, each based on one of the three stages of trauma recovery from Judith Lewis Herman’s [_Trauma and Recovery_](https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/judith-lewis-herman/trauma-and-recovery/9780465061716/). The book’s not intended as a user’s manual for the traumatized brain, but it helps make sense of things. The first stage of trauma recovery is Safety & Stabilization.
> 
> Section title is from Anne Sexton’s “Noon Walk on the Asylum Lawn”:  
> " _In the presence of mine enemies, mine enemies_  
>  The world is full of enemies.  
> There is no safe place."
> 
> If you’re a fan of musical accompaniments for your fics, Brunuhville’s instrumental [“Wolfborn”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh8_7dKX-Ww) has been my inner anthem for the reassembly / reclamation of selfhood after trauma and fits the overall arc of the fic. Something about the tentative, quiet beginning that swells movement by movement into something stirring and powerful. I didn’t even know it was originally meant as a fansong for The Witcher. Synchronicity!
> 
> <3


	2. grief that does not speak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: This one’s ugly in a different way. Sublimated rage & shame can become a hidden infection that rots everything it touches. But this is also the turning point where the real infection is exposed and the real healing can begin and there's some relief. Hang in there! 
> 
> Note the new tags. I also wanna double-up on the repetition compulsion tag-- it’s present in this chapter too, in a more aggressive form. 
> 
> Specific CW: There’s a-- not exactly a flashback, but a traumatized retelling of a forced orgasm followed by thoughts (not followed through) of severe self-injury / self-mutilation. I’ve marked off that section with “======================”-- if you’d prefer to skip this bit, stop reading after the first ““======================” and resume reading after the second.

Yennefer pats the side of the bed and finds it empty. Eskel’s gone. 

She gives herself permission to exhale, stretching out both arms and both legs beneath the bedsheets. The bed’s a clever bit of magecraft, if she does say so herself. Even Keira would struggle to concoct a worthy insult for Yennefer’s work-- the blanket’s as thick and heavy as genuine sheepskin. In fact, the only perceptible difference is the texture of the exterior wool: she’s softened it to something between felt and velvet. Not exactly the pinnacle of realism, but should a newly resurrected Lodge deign to badger her for a failure of verisimilitude, she’s quite prepared to defend her aesthetic decisions.

Unfortunately, the bed’s missing one crucial element: a witcher to warm it. 

She does have a type, doesn’t she?

Yennefer resigns herself to necessity and sits upright. The blanket cocoon’s as good as punctured, and the chill night air seeps in. 

“Eskel?” His name’s a sleepy murmur but she knows all about that marvelous witcher hearing. If he’s merely wandered off to relieve himself, he’ll hear it.

No answer. 

“Eskel?” she calls out, louder now.

No sound but a tent corner flapping in the wind.

Yennefer wraps the blanket around her shoulders and summons a pair of lovely rabbit fur slippers to slide her feet into. 

The first step outside the tent brings the chill of the magically unaltered world. It is nighttime in the forest, a place that Yennefer would never voluntarily choose as a bedding place. Yet Eskel had seemed to look forward to it earlier, in the curious way of men attracted to physical hardship for its own sake. She’d half-expected him to build a shelter out of sticks and leaves rather than stay with her in the tent. 

Yennefer heaves a sigh, notes that it’s not yet cold enough to see her own breath. At least Eskel’s not forcing her to tramp about in completely reprehensible conditions. 

Hardly forcing, she corrects herself. It’s unlikely that he’s in any kind of physical danger-- but there are other kinds.

Yennefer ignites a heatless blue flame an inch above her palm and holds it out to the darkness. Witchers speak so casually about tracking someone through the woods. What exactly do they look for? Footprints? Some manner of heat sensing? Or does their frankly unnerving sense of smell suffice? 

She picks a direction arbitrarily and sets out marching through the underbrush. Branches, logs, and tree trunks lump together in an indistinguishable mass. 

“Eskel!” 

Somewhere in the woods, a rough voice echoes back: “Here, Yen.”

“Ah, as anticipated. I too prefer that particular patch of pitch blackness.”

The darkness _hmphs_ impressively and gives way to a stream of sudden flame in a silhouette’s palm. There. She tromps through the woods toward the beacon of Igni and her own relief. 

A few clever remarks suggest themselves, but Yennefer leaves them unsaid. Eskel clearly isn’t in the mood. He’s still draped in the thin folds of his nightclothes, but the well-loved leather of his sword strap crosses his chest, and the two hilts shine blue over his shoulder in the light of her unnatural flame. 

“Enjoying the night air?” Yennefer says.

“Not exactly.”

“Mm.” 

Eskel lets the Igni sign expire and stares out into the darkness. “Thought I heard something,” he says. 

“No doubt you did. Owls copulating, bats bringing various insects to grisly ends...”

Eskel shakes his head. “Somethin’ bigger.”

“Ahhh. Do you sense a contract, Eskel? So eager to return to work?”

He huffs. “Wouldn’t mind some drinkin’ money. But, nah...”

He trails off, explaining nothing. 

Melitele’s tits! These yellow-eyed men and their fetish for brooding silence. It’s like starting over with Geralt twenty years ago. Or is thirty? If any benevolent ethereal entity is merciful, may Eskel prove a faster study. 

Yennefer bats her free hand in the air. “You would have smelled something by now. Witchers and your senses. Do you know the trouble I go through, maintaining the pinnacle of impeccable beauty around you pack of bloodhounds?” 

Eskel cocks his head, and his eyes shift sidelong in her direction. 

“Don’t worry ‘bout that,” he says. “Know the last time Geralt had a bath?” 

“Temeria still existed.” 

He rumbles agreement in his chest and turns toward her, the vines of his scars gnarled in a narrow-eyed smile that she’s come to know well. “Kinda like the smell of road dust on you. Makes you more relatable.”

Yennefer arches both eyebrows in a show of indignation. “Eskel. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were accusing me of pretension.”

“Know better than to accuse you of anythin’, Yen.” Eskel’s facing her now, takes a step that brings him into her space. Good, good. “Just don’t wanna lower the real estate value in your neighborhood.”

Yennefer lets the blue flame in her hand die out. Darkness plunges around them. She can’t even see his silhouette-- her eyes might as well be closed. She can sense the heat of him, though, and this is what she presses against. “In that case, come to bed,” she whispers into the bulk of his chest. “Perhaps we can arrange a demonstration of your value.”

His chest thrums low and deep against her fingers, beneath the linen that’s gone cold in the chill of the night air. Yennefer tilts her head, sees twin circles of lambent green in the darkness a few inches above her and knows that he’s taken the Cat potion. The rest presents itself to her: Eskel standing here alone in the chilly air, swords ready, eyes fixed on the swallowing dark. 

Come away, Yennefer could say. Come to bed. Choose blankets, warmth, a little vulgar magic to conjure a lovely fluffy carpet. Or bearskin to suit your brutish tastes. Whatever you’d like. You are a hardened creature but it is alluring, no-- how soft a world I might make for you? 

They cross her mind, all of the sweet seductions she might offer. And even as she imagines them, she knows that they will not suit this vigilant creature poised at the threshold of its den. A territorial beast. Long ago, that beast paced through her, too. She can almost hear its claws clicking in the back of her mind.

An oddity, what one becomes when one is trapped. When no options remain and the mind cannot protect itself, something older than the mind tears loose. A nakedly primal life-urge. Only instincts remain: terror, flight, an organism’s mania to go on living.

Yennefer has felt the corridors of her mind collapse, has been narrowed to that crouched atavistic thing. When the crisis passes it may grow quiet, allow itself to be subsumed by the labyrinth of the civilized mind with its illusions of society and logic. But once awakened, the animal mind never truly goes away. 

She has forgotten this but she recognizes it in Eskel now, the ancient urge that once drove her in search of wild things-- claws and fangs, shrieking in the dark. 

Yennefer drowns it. She has no desire to remember this or to become it ever again.

“Come to bed,” she says again, infusing her voice with just a hint of command. 

Eskel’s chest ripples beneath her touch. He’s bending down to kiss her; it’s how he knows to say yes. Their mouths gravitate toward each other in the dark and very nearly find each other but she can’t see properly and there’s a mismatch, a clash of teeth against teeth. Yennefer hums her displeasure, Eskel hums his amusement, and their lips correct their courses to come together, still thrumming. His naked skin lights against hers like a spark. Ah, how he crackles. 

Eskel finds her hand, takes it, and tugs her into the pitch blackness, in what she must assume is the direction of the tent. His steps take them through the underbrush without error and her suspicion is confirmed: Cat potion. She imagines the blown-wide pupils cavernous in his face. 

They’re mere steps inside the tent when Eskel wraps his arms around her waist and throws her into bed. Yennefer laughs low in her throat, slides her legs open along the unnatural velvet of the blankets. He lifts one knee onto the bed, between her thighs, bends down to kiss her with a hint of a grin and the eyes of a nocturnal beast. 

//

The sex is okay.

Yen’s still the most beautiful woman who’s let Eskel touch her. It’s not that.

She knows what she’s doing. So does he. Shit, they’ve had long enough to practice. Not that, either. 

It’s that she touches him softly. Gently. All smooth caresses and sensuous strokes. A few teasing bites at his lip and along his neck, a few fingernail trails down his back, sure, but it doesn’t hurt much. It doesn’t hurt enough.

These are bodies. Exposed unarmored bodies. He knows what those are for: holding down, shackling up. A body is its weak points. Yank it up by the hair and gut it. 

But this soft shit. What is it? 

Yen’s beneath him. Eskel’s enveloping her, pushing into her. They have to do it like this because a week ago in Kaer Morhen when he lay on his back and she touched his cock, he’d locked up. Time stopped. So they’ve learned to do it where he controls the pace and the position, the timing. 

It feels nice.

But it’s-- wrong. Incomplete. She’s not forcing him to say the right things. There is only one right thing and anything else he could say is playing pretend. 

Eskel adjusts his hips, braces himself, drives into her at an angle that he knows can be too deep. She’s open, though, ready and hungry to take in all of him. Her gasp flushes her, makes her look up at him through her eyelashes all cock-drunk and heady. Those violet eyes. Fuck. The look in them blunts the edge he was sharpening inside. He doesn’t know how to be looked at like that. 

He slows down to a pantomime of whatever this is supposed to be. Something about softness and that look she’s giving him. Even Geralt doesn’t look at him like that. Like fields on a dark night, rolling open to the sky. Not a fence or wall in sight.

Sorceress eyes. He doesn’t deserve them, but he’s the one here now and she wants it, so, alright. For her. He can do almost anything if it’s for her. 

Eskel rests his forehead on the pillow next to Yen’s, cups her shoulder with his chin, ruts into her. Lets his cock do what it does and make him useful. He can sleep afterwards.

//

Yennefer told Eskel that she wouldn’t read him. She doesn’t mean to. 

But, gods, surely a reprieve is permissible when he’s inside her? 

The thick luxury of that cock. Ahh, she could roll against it and onto it for hours, let it swell into those hidden chambers inside her until the deep tremors come. All of him emanates. Inside her, it’s a melting hum, a delicious dissolution.

Except there’s a dull bass note in it now. An angry wasp buzz.

She squirms her hips, tries to find the position where the buzz will fade and there will only be Eskel and her body’s eagerness to fit around him. Her thighs twist, his arms brace against her shoulders, and the buzz of his emanation sharpens into the syllables of _come on Yen come go ahead finish up get it over with just a body just a body finish and go to sleep_

Yennefer wraps her hands around his shoulders. “Wait. Stop.”

His hips slow and come to a rest. He pulses inside her. “Huh?”

She swears she doesn’t mean to. Eskel’s inside her, wrapped around her, his thighs pushing hers apart, arms around her shoulders, cheek pressed against hers. He stays there, waiting, while the weight of dimeritium closes around her wrists. A force impossible to resist shoves her to her knees, splays her open, and she knows pain is seconds away and there is nothing she can do--

Yennefer pushes hard against his shoulders. **“No.”**

The word freezes him. Then his hips pull back and there’s a sudden emptiness inside her, cold where heat had been. His eyebrows are creased, he’s pushing off the mattress and holding his hips up so no part of him is touching her. “Okay. Okay. Look, see.”

Is it done? It’s not real. Yennefer says this to herself so sternly that Tissaia would be proud but she’s naked, opened to him, and he is a livid stream of chafed wrists, adrenaline coursing through a trapped body, and inside, a tearing open--

“Lie down,” Yennefer commands. “Here.” She pats the pillow at her side. 

Eskel’s confused. He does what she asks anyway, kind soul, thoughtful in what he does not ask, and he flops down on his side. Yennefer fights to recover her breath in her own lungs. The limits of her own skin. 

She has to claw forward until she can grip the solidity of the present moment. Those are claws she hasn’t used for a long time. In the back of her mind, something dormant and primal blinks its animal eyes open. It comes awake. 

//

“You okay?” Eskel asks. 

“Yes.”

Her heart’s beating too fast. He can hear it thudding in there, like Zoltan’s hammer back in Kaer Morhen. 

“You sure?”

“My dear Eskel.” Yen rolls her head toward him on the pillow. Her voice is tight but she smiles so convincingly. “Do you really think you can fuck me into cardiac arrest?”

“Hm. With or without fisstech?”

“Why? Have you tried that before with someone?”

“...maybe?”

Her grin is its own Igni. That’s the best he can say for it until he learns some real poetry. 

“My. How enticingly wicked. I wouldn’t tell our mutual friend.”

“Eh. He already knows.” 

“Really! And did he swoon in righteous indignation?” 

“I, uh. Didn’t give ‘im details.”

“Mm. Spare him the scandal. Most judicious.”

Eskel glances down at himself. His cock is an optimistic worker, assured as always that no pause will go on forever. Don’t get your hopes up, friend. 

“What happened?”

Yen trains her gaze on the ceiling of the tent. “Yes. I suppose, in the interest of honest communication, that I ought to tell you.”

“...okay.”

“I said that I wouldn’t read you.”

His awareness hardens, blackens. “Yen.”

“I swear it was not my intention to do so.”

“Yeah. Sure.” 

Yen sits up. The purple eyes blaze. “Do you suppose this is easy, Eskel? For any of us?”

Eskel rolls onto his back, turns his head so he’s staring at the far side of the tent. There’s a bearskin rug on the ground. Hadn’t noticed that before. “‘pologies for givin’ you a hard time.”

“No! That’s not at all the point.” He hears her take a deep breath. “What I mean to say is… what you’ve endured is horrid. And watching you endure it-- being close to you--”

Eskel tenses. 

“Just touching you, sometimes, I can feel it. It screams out of you. Would you like me to pretend otherwise?”

“Would _like_ you to stay out of my head. Like I told you.”

“I don’t need to be in your head. You might as well bellow into my ear and insist that I not hear.” Her fingers brush his. “It’s alright, you know. Natural, even, to have--”

Eskel yanks his hand away from hers. “What did you see?” 

“You’re not genuinely asking me that.”

He rolls his head into the pillow to look at her. “I am.”

Yen looks away from him this time. Her hair spills over her shoulder so he doesn’t even get a glimpse of her face. 

“It’s my head, Yen. I oughta know what you lifted out of it.”

“Lifted.” Eskel can hear the sneer in the word. “As if I go pilfering through your mind for shiny baubles.” Yen shifts a few inches toward him, so he can see her nose, her cheek, one violet eye. “You know what happened. I’ve no interest in rattling off a litany of known horrors.”

“Why not,” he says, even as he tries to pull the question back, knows that she is trying to be kind to him but he can’t take it. The kindness is worse. He can take a hit, can keep taking them, but this kind of softness is sand against his skin. “Already happened. Nothin’ you or me or anyone can do to make it different. Maybe I just wanna know which part you saw. The beginning part? Or the later part?”

Eskel pulls up the hem of his shirt. He always leaves it on these days but now he exposes his stomach to her. The blue and red scars gleam in the torchlight.

“Did you see how I got these? Blue _and_ red? Go ‘head. Tell me.”

“Stop.”

Eskel wants to stop. He wants to but he can’t because he can’t stop being what Caranthir’s made him. Yennefer can touch him as soft as she wants, but this is still Caranthir’s body. Eskel’s just living in it. 

“You’re in bed with me,” Eskel says, or the mouth owned by Caranthir says. “You oughta know what you’re gettin’.” 

Once she knows, she won’t want it anymore. He doesn’t blame her. Caranthir’s somewhere in this tent, watching, approving. Eskel burns to kill him, burns along the spatter marks on his stomach too. There’s still nothing he can do.

“What I’m getting?” Yen twists toward him. Her shoulders, her breasts, the stretch of her thighs and hips. It hurts to see her like this, the beauty of her shone in full. He should disintegrate, turn to dust. “I know what I’m getting. A stubborn ass strong enough to survive the Path for the better part of a century, all while bearing Geralt’s nonsense. You’ve boorish tastes, astounding skill and more human feeling than you’ll ever admit. And occasionally, as in this moment, you’ve a mule-headed foolishness as well. We've all endured horrors, Eskel. Atrocities. We survive and we prevail, and I’ve no interest in hearing that survival makes us weak. Does that satisfy you? Or must we continue this exercise in self-loathing?”

Eskel goes limp against the mattress. He rolls his gaze up to the ceiling of the tent.

“Harsh, Yen.”

“Is it? Or is it simply true?” 

Eskel’s fingers find the knotted tissue of scars on his stomach. “‘My penchant for self-loathing’? Really?”

“Look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong. Do it, and I shall retract my statement.” 

He can’t, and they both know it. Yen’s always right, at least when it comes to this. 

Her hand settles on top of his. Gently but insistently, she lifts his large palm from his stomach and presses it against the unscarred expanse of her thigh. 

Eskel looks at her. She’s got a gaze that exposes him, makes him feel as if he’s shrugging off a thick coat so a Kaedweni winter can rush in. She pins him with that bracing chill. No shelter from an awareness that sees all, spares nothing. 

“Eskel.”

“Yen?”

“I know you’re in pain.”

He jerks his head aside, tries to draw his hand back. Her grip tightens and doesn’t let go. “Look at me,” she says. 

That bearskin rug on the far side of the tent, it’s dark brown. Wonder if any part of it’s real, or if it’ll dissolve in the morning. Wonder if there’s an enchantment that would dissolve him with it.

“Eskel. Please. Look at me.”

He has to grip the sheets in his free hand before he can. Yen sees him. He doesn’t want to be seen like this, all the vile crawling things in him exposed. She holds onto his hand and keeps him there, lying open. 

“Don’t ask that of me again.” Yen doesn’t look away, so Eskel can’t, either. “Don’t make me part of what hurt you. Never.” 

For the first time Eskel notices the strain in her face, the crease between her eyebrows. She’s in pain. The fact crashes over him, shocks him into blinking awake at her. Has she looked like this the whole time? All these weeks, or just tonight? Why hasn’t he noticed?

“I didn’t…” Eskel has to close his eyes for a second. That new expression on her face, it freezes all the words in him. “Didn’t know I was doin’ it.”

Dumb excuse, a kid’s excuse. He did know but it ran out ahead of him, faster than he was and barreling through him with a snarling certainty that he can’t muster for anything else these days. Worse, the desperation’s still in him for those words. To hear her say what happened in that cell. He’s trying to carry it all inside him, unseen as an abscess. Every night it leaks more pus. 

Tell it, he still wants to say, tell what happened, Yen, lemme hear you say it. Say you see me.

Eskel the abscess opens his eyes. “I won’t ask you again,” he says. “I’m… sorry.”

Yen shakes her head. “I understand,” she says, but is that real? Can she? “I simply… I can’t.”

“I get it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s a’right.” 

Yen slides into the sheets again, flattens herself against his side. Her hand falls against his chest. The gesture’s tentative, almost shy. Kinda funny, that shyness, when the sheets still smell like the two of them. He doesn’t like the smell of his own arousal anymore, the few drops that leaked out of him into her or onto the sheets. But the scent of her skin is there to cover it, lilac and gooseberries over decay. 

This could’ve been a nice night. Instead it’s another surprise threesome with Caranthir and he is tired of thinking about Caranthir. The thing couldn’t have lasted longer than an hour, two tops. And here they are, weeks later, his cock wilting. 

“When’s it over?” Eskel says aloud. “When does the smell of shit wash away?” 

Yen sighs into his chest. “As long as it takes.”

“How long’s that?”

“There’s no rushing these matters, dear. More than the body needs to heal.” 

Yeah, yeah, okay. “Got any spells to speed things up?”

Yen kisses him on his scarred cheek. “Mule-headed,” she says affectionately. “I’m afraid you’ll have to confront the same mortifying qualities as the rest of us. That vexing little matter of emotions.”

“Don’t have those,” Eskel says. “Witcher and all. Everybody knows.” He says it with a smile, though. 

Yen pokes him in the ribs. “Don’t even jest. It brings back unpleasant memories of those first years with Geralt. I’ve no idea how the two of you managed to make any romantic overtures to each other at all.”

“Eh. He’s a big softie.” Eskel kisses the top of her head. Her hair’s silky, glossy-black. It fills his nose with the scent of flowers. “But you know that by now.”

“Of course.” Yen curls into him, one thigh over his stomach, one arm circling his chest. “As are you. In your own monosyllabic way.”

“Uh. Thanks.”

She gives a close-mouthed chuckle, nestles the softness of her face into the side of his neck.

They lie together, a pair of beating hearts under the blanket that makes his medallion hum. It’s kinda soothing, that subtle buzz. Like putting his palm against a lover’s chest and feeling the vibrations of their moans. 

“It will be alright, you know,” Yen murmurs. It’s a sleepy stream of noises tickling across his throat. “You’ll be alright. One day.” 

Eskel tucks her against him. Her body’s small, slender. She could teleport him a mile in the air or a mile below the sea if she wanted to, but her power’s a secret she carries inside her. Body to body, she feels vulnerable. 

“Thank you,” Eskel murmurs into the flower-scented sheen of her hair.

Yen holds him tighter, as if she’s the one hoping to feel protected. 

//

Yennefer waits awhile in the dark, riding the rise and fall of Eskel’s chest. When his breath starts to rumble slow and deep, rippling some drooping muscle in the back of his throat, she sidles out from beneath his arm and steps lightly out of the bed. His hand flops into the indentation she’s left in the sheets, and he goes on sleeping. 

How peaceful he looks now. No haunted cast to his eyes, no weight bowing his shoulders. Simply at rest. 

Yennefer turns away. She summons the rabbit fur slippers and steps into the night air in nothing but her nightclothes but really, will the owls gasp at her indecency? A couple murmured words invoke a sphere of rippling golden light around her, keeping the chill night air at bay. She’d never admit it, but the spell is little more than a refined variant of the witchers’ Quen sign. Can’t let it go to the poor things’ heads. 

The heatless blue flame springs back to life over her palm again. The forest is blue-lit around her. Mindful of that famous witcher hearing, Yennefer casts a circle of silence around her as well. Then she can step into the forest cracking branches, twigs, and dried leaves with nary a worry that Eskel will sit up in the tent behind her, ready for needless heroics. 

The forest. Ghastly place, really. It’s dirty, full of unsettling noises, and lacking a single amenity to recommend it. These brief jaunts into the wilderness serve as a valuable reminder of what she has-- the ability to teleport, for one. Once they reach Novigrad, she will happily turn over Sor’ca’s reins to a helpful stableman and subsequently avoid long-distance horse travel for the next decade. 

Yennefer finds herself in a patch of forest with thin undergrowth. She comes to a halt.

Here, then. 

She breathes.

Ciri, she thinks. Tissaia. Triss. Philippa. Geralt. Eskel.

Herself, too, of course. She musn’t forget herself. 

Very well. Yennefer of Vengerberg. Add it to the list-- there are so many names, it will make no difference.

Ciri-- hunted by Emhyr, by Eredin, by Bonhart, by Volgefortz for her Elder Blood and the womb that can create a child of the same. Her darling ugly one whom the men of power would reduce to a mere vessel, an object to be seized and filled. 

That is where Yennefer concentrates. Of course the names are endless and the list of indignities infinite. But she cannot bear them all, right now. Her once-broken fingers cannot carry their weight. 

The animal consciousness inside her shakes itself. It knows survival and the terror of failing to survive and nothing more. Yennefer feels the rough wildness of its hide, the brutality of its claws. It has no conscience. 

This is what she has been made into by her father, by the Battle of Sodden when she was eyeless and hurtling magic into the dark. And then came Vilgefortz and the screws he drilled into her fingers until the bones snapped. She knew the terror of helplessness early, a hunchback in a poor village with a father who would sooner vomit than say a single kind word to her. Beset by the mercilessness of a peasant’s life, no one else in that village had enough kindness to care for what did or did not happen to that daughter of the pig farmer, what that creature may have endured alone, helpless, in the night. 

Magic had seemed the gift of a bloody-minded god. Here you are, it seemed to say: your salvation and your vengeance. You will be remade, and you shall never feel helpless again. So Yennefer embraced it, threw herself into its waters, forbidden or not, and drank deep. She became powerful, yes. And her enemies became more powerful yet. No longer were they farmboys drunk on the discovery of their manhood, the novelty of their own adolescent strength. Now she faced master sorcerers, witcher-slayers, emperors, kings from another world. Still these men come, take what they want, and leave wreckage in their wake.

And the reason? The destruction, the cruelty and brutality, it is always for the same reason, from the farmboys to Eredin: these men believe they are owed. They take because they can.

Yennefer seethes. Magic races in her veins and the feral snarling urge in her hindmost brain urges it on. They are the same, the chaos of the unseen, the animal that knows only life and death, and they share the same ravenous need. These men who take and take and take: she wants their heads. Their veins and bones and nerves and skin. She wants their screams, their nightmares, their helplessness, their boneless sobbing in the dark, wants to see them tear at their own skin to erase what was done to it, failing because some horrors can never be undone. Let those men come! She has nothing pure left in her. She has become the thing that could survive them and it is brutal, all-consuming. It is merciless and it will never stop. 

The animal roars up through her spine. Yennefer opens her mouth and it screams through her in the voice of chaos, annihilation, inferno, and the flames curl blacker than night.

Yennefer comes to her senses eventually. She doesn’t know how long after. The dirt beneath her is hot to the touch; the smell of incinerated wood lingers in air that’s thick with ash. There’s a meek brush of moonlight on the leaves above her, the only light. 

She turns her head reflexively. No sign that Eskel’s stirred. The sphere of silence must have held. That’s a relief. No need startling him awake with this little mess. 

The blue flame leaps back into her hand. She tightens her lips at the scene that now flickers into view: scorched devastation, cinders and ash. Well, meteors fall in forests all the time, don’t they?

Yennefer sighs into the smoking crater made with sorcery that, for all of its potency, has not given her the power she wants. The ability to protect the people she loves. To never feel helpless again. 

It had been easier in Vilgefortz’s dungeon. He’d held up the megascope, told her that there was no use resisting and she must tell him about Ciri. It didn’t matter when the magic burned her alive or the screws twisted her fingers until they snapped. She would have wished herself a hundred more fingers to break if breaking them could keep Ciri safe.

Years later, Ciri is not safe. Eskel is not safe. For every Vilgefortz that Geralt kills, there is a Bonhart. For every Bonhart, a Caranthir. If all of them perished, if she were to collect the head of every man who has raped, murdered, tortured, laughed to see the wake of his own destruction, another would come. 

Yes, it had been easier with Vilgefortz. Her pain had an equivalence-- every broken finger meant she’d kept Ciri safe for a moment longer. 

Now her daughter is in danger, her lover is in pain. Yennefer is offering her hands again. She can take the torture that this world has to give; she has done it before and can go on doing it. Here are her fingers, then. Come, Caranthir, Eredin, go on-- break them! 

The moon shifts in the sky by the time Yennefer returns to bed. 

//

In the morning, Eskel finds her while she’s finishing the last of the packing.

“Wanna know somethin’ funny. I just came across a patch of burnt-out woods out there.” He leans against a tree trunk in an elaborate show of casualness. “Pretty sure it wasn’t there yesterday. Strangest thing-- wasn’t just burned. Was incinerated. Even the rocks melted. You wouldn’t know anything ‘bout that, would you, Yen?” 

“Ah, you’ve caught me,” Yennefer says. “I was wandering about last night in search of an impromptu privy, when what should I see but a particularly large spider. You know how I loathe the creatures.”

Eskel’s eyebrows crease. “So you…”

“Acted in self-defense. Yes.”

“Yen, you destroyed an entire patch of woods.”

“I was provoked.”

Eskel’s eyebrows threaten to achieve liftoff and depart his forehead. “Uh huh,” he says but asks nothing more. 

* * *

They’re a few hours west of Piana when Eskel hears footsteps running after them. His hand’s on his sword hilt and the blade’s halfway out the scabbard before he finishes turning. It’s one of the local folk, sun-cragged and dressed in the washed gray-brown of a shirt that’s had to last for years. He’s puffing after them on the road. Eskel releases the hilt, feels the steel slide back into its sheath. 

“Master witcher!” the man pants. “Begging your pardon, but it’s been an awful long spell since one of your guild’s passed through.” He takes them in, the eagerness on his face fading as he gets a better look at Eskel’s scars and Yen glowering from Sor’ca’s back. “I, eh-- we could sure use your help, if you’ve the time to spare. Begging your pardon again.”

“What’s your trouble?” Eskel says.

“Those water demons that come clawing out of the river.” The man’s got a robust build but no weapons. He’s not a threat. Why should he be? “We get ‘em every year, tell you the truth, but rain’s been awful of late. Brings ‘em up by the droves and we’re having trouble pushing ‘em back.”

“Drowners.” Eskel turns to Yen. She’s raising her eyebrows but the rest of her face is blank. Carefully blank, even. “Shouldn’t be much trouble. Couple hours, if that.”

“It’s your choice,” Yen says. 

Funny, he hasn’t had work since-- what, over a month now? Since Kaer Morhen. The man’s looking up at him with eyes crinkled like a hopeful dog’s. 

“A’right,” Eskel decides. “Let’s talk rates. Then you can show me where they hunt.”

The pay’s decent for a drowner job. He almost asks Yen if she wants to come. Before he’s finished taking a breath to speak, she’s already selected a book (from where? Her saddlebags aren’t big enough to carry any) and seated herself on a chair that didn’t exist a moment ago. “Enjoy your runabout in the muck,” she says with a wave of her gloved hand and her eyes already fixed on the page. 

The man shows Eskel the stretch of marshy river bank. It doesn’t take Eskel long to find the drowners’ trail. Damn, the man’s right: must’ve been some bad rain to bring ‘em out in these numbers. The first pack doesn’t take long to find and Eskel’s shoulders get a good workout cutting them down. The job looks done until he sees the dark lip of rock covering a passage that leads underground. Cave, great. Probably a whole nest system down there.

He’s right. The drowners down here have bloated bellies and a thick layer of blubber covering their shoulders and arms. The bones littering the cave tell the other part of the story. Eskel needs two doses of Cat and another hour to hunt them all down in the dark. Bastards had time to pop out multiple clutches of eggs. He spends another twenty minutes combing the passageways, making sure there’s nothing left but old bones, drowner corpses, and the craters left by Igni blasts. Well-nourished population down here. He cuts the tongues out of the fattest specimens. He’s been meaning to make a few doses of Maribor potion and this’ll make an especially potent batch. 

Eskel’s splattered with river mud and blue-green blood when he returns. The man nods and smiles at the telltale signs. He’s definitely been through this song and dance before. There’s no trouble in handing over the coin and a count shows that the man even threw in a little extra. It’s either a tip or he’s not great at math. The man thanks him for his help, Eskel thanks him for his business, and then he and Yen are back on the road, clopping west. 

“Sufficient for drinking money?” Yen asks.

“Hrn. With Novigrad prices, I’ll be lucky if it covers a night.”

“Now now, let’s not be defeatist. I’m positive that Dandelion will furnish us with a considerable discount-- with a little persuasion.”

Eskel quirks a smile. “But we’re keepin’ it friendly, right? ...Yen?” 

Yen tilts her head at an angle that would look coy on any other woman. “When have I ever fallen short of the embodiment of amiability?” 

They clop along in companionable silence after that. The horses’ hooves beat a steady rhythm down the long stretch of road and the steadiness of it lets a ghost of a realization emerge from the back of Eskel’s awareness, helps it settle into sight. Drowners, client negotiation, a couple hours’ honest work: he remembers this. It’s his workday, his same old same old, not exactly boring but comfortable. Routine. Nothing’s felt this familiar since Kaer Morhen. He’s been a stranger to his own skin, but just now he’d slipped into the role of Eskel the witcher like an old saddle. And the man had gone along with it, treated him the way they always do, always have. Little more polite, if anything. 

Doesn’t make sense. He’s a living abscess inside a witcher’s skin, yet no one can see it. No one’s stopped to take a good sniff, ask _what’s that stench? What’s died?_

Eskel catches a glimpse of his shadow behind him as they ride west. It’s a grotesque length in the dust, stretched too long. Fixing to snap. 

* * *

“Sweet Melitele,” Dandelion cries, collapsing backward onto the tavern counter, “if the hymns have done you justice and you are truly a goddess of mercy, shine upon me now! Deliver me from the wrath of the merciless!”

“Don’t blaspheme,” the innkeep gruffs. 

“My stalwart friend. My fidelitous and undaunted companion, my good man-- no.” Dandelion rolls on the countertop. He braces himself now with his palms against the counter, the hard edge of wood jutting into his chest. “This is no mocking jest. What you hear is a cry of supreme suffering, torn from the depths of a stricken heart.”

“Don’t put your stricken heart on my counter.” The innkeep’s voice remains the same low growl. “It’s wet.”

“Wet?” Dandelion’s voice sheds the waver of high drama. He swipes a finger across the grain of the counter experimentally. “No one’s come in since the afternoon. Why should it be wet?” 

“Because you’re blubbering your maiden’s tears all over it! What’s gotten you so weepy, anyway? Creditors come ‘round again?”

“Mikkel, do I need to show you my receipts? Why, the Temple of the Eternal Fire isn’t as financially sound as we are! If a sudden plague of tastelessness were to strike this fair city, and every benighted soul were driven to abandon culture, the arts, and all that is beautiful for the period of a fortnight-- no, _two_ fortnights, an entire month!-- even in that extremity, the Chameleon would stand hearty and hale, a locus of cultural renaissance after the plague passes.” 

Mikkel stopped listening several seconds ago. Dandelion catches him staring out the window. 

“Mikkel,” Dandelion sighs, “you’re a true friend--”

“Employee,” Mikkel corrects.

“A true friend and dedicated employee,” Dandelion says, “but sometimes-- forgive my cowardly spirit, friend-- a fear overcomes me that our visions for this establishment don’t entirely align.”

“No? Need drinks served? Need your rooms rented out?”

“But of course.” Dandelion opens his arms in a gesture that seeks to embrace the shelves of bottles behind the counter. “The voice of truth speaks in but a whisper. It calls for the nectar of wine to sweeten its path from the heart to the tongue. And where the song of truth rings out in harmony from the chambers of many wounded hearts, ah!” He brings his closed fists to his face and splays his fingers out in an expansive fan. “The scales fall from our eyes and, at long last, we can see one another in our nakedness and our truth! In this wretched world we are all sojourners on the same lonely pilgrimage, but to what sacred site, Mikkel? In search of what distant god?”

“Hey! I said no blaspheming!” 

“And there shall be none!” Dandelion crows as if Mikkel has offered him the most enthusiastic agreement. “For when our eyes open, we behold the truth: the great pilgrimage leads us to the temple of one another! The sacred site is ourselves!” His soft fist thuds on the countertop. “Let us seize that fragile and beautiful revelry where’er it may emerge. Let us declare ourselves a sanctuary for what this world would trample. Yes, Mikkel, we shall have wine! We shall have rooms!”

“You been dipping into the wine today, Master Dandelion?”

Dandelion thuds his fist on the countertop again. “Of course I have. How else can I offer our patrons a model of holy revelry, man? Have you not heard a word I’ve said?” 

Mikkel’s grunt might be called noncommittal at best. 

“Ah.” Dandelion flutters a bejeweled hand. “Ephemeralities, all. What matters is our provision of the tools, the enlivening and the enlightening. Let each soul undertake its worldly labor for itself.”

“That’s what you all were yabbering about before?”

“Who all?”

Mikkel lifts his eyes up to the ceiling in answer.

“Ahhh, yes.” Dandelion slumps against the counter. “Thanks for the reminder. I didn’t finish my prayer. Sweet Melitele, if you see fit in your mercy, deliver me from Yennefer of Vengerberg.”

“Yennefer of Vengerberg,” Mikkel echoes with a frown. “Now, where have I heard that name before.”

Dandelion brightens. “In my songs, naturally! She features prominently in my Cintra cycle, and in my upcoming--”

“Ah!” Mikkel nods in recognition. “That’s right. Your woman’s got a nice song about her.”

“My wo-- Priscilla?” 

“Mm hm. How does it go. It’s a touch weepy but... Ah yes: _Your scent, berries tart, lilac sweet_. You know the one?”

“Do I know the-- of course I know the one, I helped her write it.”

“Talented lady, your Priscilla. Hm. Yennefer of Vengerberg! In our little inn! Would’ve ordered that new rug if I’d known. It’s like hosting Princess Konegunda.”

“Yes, yes, what a spectacular honor,” Dandelion mutters. 

“Don’t see why you’re so glum, Master Dandelion. She came in with your friend Geralt, no?”

“Geralt…? No! You’ve met-- hm, no, wait, you weren’t working for us then. No, that’s not Geralt. That’s a different witcher. His name’s Eskel. He’s Geralt’s…” 

Mikkel frowns into the trailing silence. “Friend?”

Dandelion laughs. “I suppose? Friend, brother? You know-- Geralt’s told so many stories about Eskel over the years, but we’ve only just met. He doesn’t look anything like I pictured. So many questions I’ve thought of asking him. Ah, the evanescent web of our connections...”

“Well, he’s right up the stairs, en’t he?”

Dandelion straightens. His eyes kindle with the excitement of a bard slowly realizing that he has extended access to another Wolf school witcher at last. “Mikkel. You’re an absolute genius. Ah, my exquisite jewel of a friend!” 

Mikkel dodges Dandelion’s attempt at what threatens to become either a hug or a kiss. “Employee!” he yells, but his employer has already scampered up the stairs. 

* * *

Eskel’s got a headache. The feeling’s a novelty-- he doesn’t get sick, and those long-ago mages who pulverized his body in order to build it back up again ensured that even hangovers don’t last long. What pals. 

Yet none of those mages had seen Dandelion coming. The man never stops talking. Eskel’s eyes drift to the empty bottles that they’ve assembled in a line at the edge of the table they share. Dandelion’s footing the bill, so he’s not all bad. At least, he’s implied that he’s footing the bill. Eskel should check on that. 

“--his boundless competence,” Dandelion finishes. 

Eskel drags his hand down his face. “Huh?” 

“Potions,” Dandelion says. He’s moving his lips in an exaggerated manner as if this is the second or third time he’s said the word. “He makes it sound as if you all use the same ones.”

“Oh, sure.” Eskel blinks his eyes several times. Dandelion dresses like a runaway butler who’s made off with his master’s finery by wearing it all at once. All the silken shine makes Eskel’s eyes hurt. “Yeah, you’ve got Thunderbolt and Maribor and Cat and Swallow... Hrn. Never forget Swallow. Speakin’ of swallowing…” He looks meaningfully at the mostly-empty bottle between them.

Good sport. Dandelion doesn’t even sigh as he flags a passing barmaid. “Alysta! Another libation of--”

“Vodka, got it,” Alysta says, and bustles off. 

“Thanks,” Eskel says. 

Dandelion raises his hand. Does it like lords do, grand and slow, like he expects people to listen. This peacock must have some land-owning blood. “Please. The gift of your insight is more valuable to me than all the wine in Toussaint.”

Yeah, he’s definitely paying. Eskel grabs the mostly empty bottle and drains the last slosh. “Ah, y’know,” he says, thudding the newly emptied bottle down on the table, “dunno what much I can offer. You’ve known Geralt for…” He tries to do the math and the numbers swim together. Forty years? That can’t be right. Humans age too fast. Was that some other bard that Geralt used to talk about? “...a while now, right?” 

The overdressed fop nods sagely. “More than twenty years. Our friendship is old enough to bear its own litter of children!”

That’s a strange image. “Huh,” Eskel says instead of saying anything else. 

The bard takes his response as astonishment and nods again, this time more dramatically. “So are the recipes closely guarded?”

“Huh?” 

“The recipes for the potions.” Dandelion’s doing that thing with his mouth again, peeling his lips back from the words. “What were those whimsical names you mentioned-- Thunderbolt? What’s that?”

“Oh. Yeah. Lets you hit harder.”

“A pragmatic innovation, to be sure! Which one is that? The black one? Sits in a thick murk at the bottom of the bottle like overbrewed tea?”

“Nah, nah. That’s Black Blood. Thunderbolt’s bright green, from the Mahakaman spirit.”

“Bright green?” Dandelion frowns. “Hm! I can’t say that I recall Geralt drinking something that color.”

“Me either. He never brews Thunderbolt. Keep tellin’ ‘im he’s a damned fool. You know why?” Eskel plants his elbows on the table and leans forward. “‘Cause you’re not gonna just impale a forktail on silver like a godsdamned toothpick. You know what I’m sayin’? Sons of bitches got thick scales. Gotta. Males fight each other for territory, see?”

“Naturally! But of course!” Dandelion mirrors his forward lean. The bard’s nodding bright-eyed and no one ever cares this much about forktails, so Eskel keeps going. 

“Uh huh. Forktail claws, dunno if you’ve ever seen one up close. Shit’ll give you nightmares the first time. Could tear through a horse’s ribs tryin’ to pet it, no lie. You get these reptiles the size of siege towers, right, and you have ‘em fightin’ each other, you think they’re gonna have paper for skin? What do you think?”

“Oh no,” Dandelion says, “that would be absurd.”

“That’s right. Absurd! They got their kings and lords same as us. Don’t get to be the biggest dog in the pack without earnin’ it. So the chief forktail, the alpha, he’s gonna have scales like godsdamned plate armor. Battle-hardened, know what I’m sayin’? You want that trophy, you gotta saw through that shit. I tell Geralt that. I say, Geralt, brother, you can’t just pet ‘em with your sword and expect ‘em to die.”

“Surely not. How ridiculous.”

“Damned right, ridiculous! Lil’ silver love tap ain’t gonna do it. So, Thunderbolt. Toughens you up, makes you hit like a chort in mating season. That’ll get you through forktail scales, easy.” 

Dandelion hasn’t looked away from him once. It’s kinda nice. A little weird, but nice. “What a boon! If it's that useful, why wouldn't Geralt make use of Thunderbolt?”

“‘cause he’s a godsdamned softie,” Eskel says. “Wants to give the critters a fair fight. Wouldn’t ever say it like that to the old man, but that’s how he talks. Ever since we were kids.” He pauses. “Don’t tell ‘im I said that. He gets a lil’ sensitive.”

“Bard’s honor,” Dandelion intones. Not actually a comforting phrase. “All of this has proven so fascinating, Eskel. Honestly, I’m just-- so honored that you’ve chosen to share your wisdom, hard-won from so many arduous years on the Path. The simple fact that you’ve survived this long is a monumental feat!”

“Nah. Just bad luck.”

Eskel laughs. Dandelion doesn’t.

“Well,” the disaster of a fabric collection says, “I was actually curious about that, too. You’ve been on the Path for as long as Geralt has. I’ve often longed to meet another witcher, to see if Geralt’s experience is typical, or if there are far more unsung songs to discover!”

Eskel shrugs. “Ah, you know. The Path is what it is. When’s that other bottle’s comin’...”

“I’ll get Alysta when I see her,” Dandelion says, without breaking eye contact. “In the meantime, while we’re waiting… indulge my curiosity, I beg you. How rare your story is. You and Geralt are the only witchers I’ve ever met.”

“Mm.”

“Traveling the Continent alone, battling baneful creatures that the rest of us would shudder to imagine. There’s so much that you’ve experienced. So much you must know that the rest of us have chosen to forget, or consigned to the realm of fairy tales. That must be…” Dandelion considers his words here. “...a lonely truth to keep.”

The table’s brand new, the varnish unscratched, almost slick.. He hasn’t noticed until now. 

Eskel hears the thunk of a full bottle on the table and Alysta’s receding footsteps through the general clamor.

“What do you want me to say?” Eskel says to the fresh wood varnish. “It's my job. Been doin' it eight, nine months every year, goin' back eighty years. I do it, I get paid. Not much to say.” 

Eskel keeps his eyes on the bottle as he pours another round into his mug. 

“Ahhh, but therein lies the question, my studiously inarticulate friend. What exists to be said? In a profession such as yours, what remains speakable? I’ve seen Geralt at work. Your experience is a vast well that penetrates into the recesses of the human heart. And both of you carry it in silence.”

Eskel shrugs. He’s got a mouth full of vodka, a body full of scars, and no desire to talk shop with a purple pincushion. Dandelion doesn’t have a single visible scar. His only calluses are the ones on his finger pads, where he presses the lute strings down. 

“Yeah,” Eskel says, “you don’t wanna hear ‘bout our work.”

Dandelion leans forward. “Try me.”

The man doesn't know what he’s asking. Wouldn’t show the traces of a cocksure smile if he did. There’s a reason that Eskel buries these pieces, bricks them up in a crypt he never opens unless he’s adding more bones. What’s buried there could bury him, too. 

He’s not sure he’s still thinking about the Path. 

Eskel’s elbows grind into the wood. “Wanna know somethin’?”

“What?”

“Fuck you.” 

Dandelion sits back. For a moment, Eskel’s stung with regret. He’s stupid-drunk, angry without cause, too harsh, he’s-- he stops when he sees the sparkle in Dandelion’s eye. 

“What was that for?” Dandelion asks, with a hint of a smile. 

Alright. Stupid-drunk it is. “You bards. Wanna make a song out of everything, pour yellow paint over horseshit and call it gold. It ain’t like that. Nothing is.”

“I understand. You’ve been afflicted by the odious works of pontificating buffoons. They’re like swans trumpeting day and night-- each song, the same tiresome ode to their own voices.”

Eskel cocks an eyebrow so high his forehead hurts, but Dandelion doesn’t catch it. 

“Real bardic work,” Dandelion continues, “isn’t about pretty metaphors or catchy melodies. It’s not about the outward form of art at all. The bard’s sacred task is to tell the truth and make it understood-- hard truths, gorgeous truths, truths spread in a mist so fine, we’re surprised to discover they can be gathered and named at all.”

Eskel taps his fingers against the handle of his mug, watching it rotate toward him one jerking half-inch at a time. “Sorry, I don’t speak metaphor-ese.”

“Oh, you’ll find that you do. It’s a universal language, like music or lovemaking.” Dandelion won’t let Eskel and his mug commune in peace. A patch of purple satin lowers itself into his field of vision. Dandelion nearly touches his head against the table to catch Eskel’s eye. “I can give you an example, if you’d like.”

Eskel turns his head to cast his gaze over the common room. It’s filled with a decent crowd, and a surprising one-- hardly ever see men in stained workshirts crowding around dice while the next table over, gentlemen in silk doublets prop their chins in their hands and stare down at a game of Gwent. Mugs thud onto tables, voices laugh, chairs scrape, the barmaids’ brisk footsteps pound across the floorboards. 

No Yen, though. She’d get him out of this conversation, Geralt’s friendship and discounted room and board be damned. As it is, something won’t let Eskel just stand up and leave. The collection of empty vodka bottles might have something to do with it.

Dandelion takes his stasis as permission. “Once upon a time,” he says, “there lived a dream golem. Mages created him long ago when nightmares ran rampant across the land. He was made of the stuff of dreams, born and bred to hunt down dreams-- who better for the job? He worked long and he worked well and thanks to his tireless work, nightmares slowly disappeared from the land. The people slept soundly once again. But the dream golem, the nightmare collector-- he remembers every monster in his hoard of horrors. While the rest of the world dreams sweetly, night after night, the dream golem changes color-- until he's the same shade as the nightmares he gathers."

The handle of the mug is smooth under Eskel’s thumb. He brushes his thumb along the carved wooden edge, rubbing it back and forth.

At length, he clears his throat. “There’s no such thing as dream golems.”

Dandelion’s smile is sad. His eyes are too old for a human his age. “Forgive me. I must use lies to tell the truth.”

Eskel shifts his weight on the bench. This isn’t good attention. It’s like Dandelion’s walked in on him bathing but instead of shutting the door and leaving, he’s still standing there, taking it all in. It’s not his to see. “Geralt like that story?”

“I’ve never told it to him. It’s not his.” In his peripheral vision Eskel sees Dandelion tilt his head with scientific interest. “Curious. You two sound so alike. Sometimes you even move the same, but I can see you’re different. There’s a heaviness to you, Eskel. I might even call it a darkness.”

Eskel’s first instinct is to laugh it off but he can taste bile in his throat and bites it down. No one’s called him dark before. His hair, maybe, especially compared to the godsdamned White Wolf with his winter camouflage. Not him, himself. It rattles the door to the crypt. The bones inside clamor for release; even this stranger can hear it. Buffoon. Open the door a crack, and what oozes out will be unspeakable. Wriggling and obscene.

“Yeah, well.” Eskel throws back the last of the vodka in his mug. “Wait a couple centuries. If I’m still breathin’ for some reason, I’ll go white as he is. But you won’t be ‘round to see it.” 

He’s dripping ichor. The abscess is leaking. Eskel plants his palms on the table, stands up. He can’t be here any more. 

Dandelion’s still seated. “I didn’t mean to offend.” 

Eskel shrugs as if he’s jerking flies off his shoulders. “You didn’t. Just…” He shakes his head. “Thanks for the drinks.”

Dandelion looks up at Eskel with something dangerously close to pity. “It was my pleasure.” Brief pause, and then-- “Eskel,” he says, the name too soft in his stranger’s mouth, “there’s something else about bardic work: some truth kills when it’s buried too long. It needs to be drawn, or it turns to poison. I know you and Geralt will always have your witcher secrets, but… it might do you some good, to let the poison out.”

The mug’s sitting empty on the table. Eskel could grab it, smash it across the bard’s unscarred face until the aristocratic nose breaks. Once blood runs dark and wet down Dandelion’s chin and jeweled brocade, Eskel can spit into his shattered face _what do you know? What the fuck do you know?_

The man wants stories? Try these: Once upon a time, there was a rotfiend. He smelled like swamp shit in summer and every day he grew more putrid ‘til the maggots ate the last of him. No one noticed. Once upon a time, there was a weakling. Someone showed him his place. He got what he deserved. Once upon a time--

He’s tired, suddenly. There are no stories and no words to tell them. Just the abscess, its rot and silence. 

“Let you know when to get the leeches,” Eskel says, and he stumbles toward the stairs. 

* * *

Strange existence, living in this rented room in this crowded city. There’s no quiet here. Even the air is busy with competing scents: fish, herbs, spices, bodies, chamberpots, horses, horseshit, perfumes from the rich women, perfumes from the prostitutes on their way to the docks, wet dirt, the distance acrid scents of the brickmakers or the cloth dyers. 

Not a bad thing. It’s always good for a distraction.

They wait for Geralt and Ciri to come back. Yen reads by the window in their room. Eskel wanders the city, checks the noticeboards, takes a couple simple jobs. More drowners. They’re a neverending goldmine. Well, more like a copper mine. With Novigrad’s sewer system, he could afford to live here full time if he wanted to. Yen would eventually run out of sarcastic comments about his smell.

Then one late afternoon, Geralt and Ciri walk in through the front door of the Chameleon like they’re coming back from a trip to the market. Eskel’s halfway through the first vodka bottle of the day. He sees them come in, and he doesn’t remember getting up and crossing the common room. He just remembers closing his arms around the road and horse smell of Geralt and his lips around Geralt’s lips. Ciri mutters something and Geralt laughs into his mouth. 

“Oh,” Dandelion says, and Geralt and Eskel break away to find him standing there. “Geralt! So good to see you back! And reunited with your…” He waves a shiny purple arm. “Ha! All these years, I’ve thought he was your brother.”

“He is,” Geralt says. 

“Brother in arms,” Eskel clarifies. “Not by blood.”

“Not by blood.” Geralt hooks an arm around Eskel’s waist. “Though I busted you up enough times…”

Eskel tightens his arm around Geralt’s shoulders, jostles him with rough affection. “You busted _me_ up? Memory slipping again, old geezer?” 

Dandelion blinks. 

Ciri saves the day by approaching Dandelion with open arms. “I see you’ve survived!” she says, holding him to her and pounding him on the back twice. “And how’s my favorite bank robber?”

“Delighted!” Dandelion enthuses. “You’re back! You’re both back! Tonight calls for celebration. We’ll prepare the Chamelon’s finest culinary pleasures, summon our most accomplished musical artists to the stage!”

“Dandelion, are you by any chance referring to yourself and Priscilla?”

Dandelion doesn’t even have the decency to blush. “Of course,” he says with a wink and a flourishing bow. “Only the best for my friends.” 

Then Yen comes downstairs. Ciri barely has time to brace herself before she’s wrapped up in Yen’s embrace. 

“Then you did it?” Yen says it to the ceiling, her chin on Ciri’s shoulder.

“Yes. We did it together, Geralt and I. Imlerith is dead.”

Yen separates herself for the few inches necessary to cup Ciri’s face in her perpetually gloved hands and fix her with a fierce stare. 

“You rash, impetuous, reckless hellion of a daughter. How on earth did you turn out so well?”

Ciri grins into Yennefer’s palms. “I had superior role models.” 

“Not so sure ‘bout that.” Eskel makes a big show of looking her up and down. “No trophy hook. Tsk, tsk. What kinda witcher comes back without proof the job’s done?” 

Ciri stands back from Yennefer’s embrace and props one hand on her hip. “Left the head behind. Consider it a family discount, Uncle. I know you can’t afford the contract fee.” She winks.

Geralt laughs and tightens his grip around Eskel’s waist. Eskel has to laugh too. “Oh ho _ho_ , so that’s what you been teachin’ her,” he says, “how to rag on her poor damned uncle,” but he shuts up after that because Yen’s rushing toward them. Her witchers have one free arm each, and they enclose the petite slenderness of her in a bulky shared embrace.

Dandelion’s eyes bulge at the sight. He seems to leave his body for a few seconds. Ciri has to hold him by the shoulders and steer him into a chair before he can talk sensibly again. 

* * *

The man’s a dreadful combination of incessant blather and truly astonishing levels of self-regard, but Yennefer has to give Dandelion this: he knows how to throw a party. The other patrons of the tavern undoubtedly have no idea why the owner of the establishment is flitting about in such high spirits, periodically bringing shots of moleyarrow liquer to each table in turn. On the house! he trumpets. With the liquor flowing and the kitchen offering novel delights, who can complain?

Yennefer sits back in her chair. Imlerith is dead. After all these years, they’ve proven that the Wild Hunt is not so unassailable after all. She will allow herself to enjoy this. 

And there is much to enjoy. Geralt and Eskel hunch over the table from opposite sides, talking in their low rumbles that give way to wry grins or shoulder shoves, one trying to tap the other’s forehead while the other dodges, flicking crumbs at each other. Nearly a hundred years old, and they still act like boys. Priscilla’s joined their table, too. She’s a perfectly lovely young woman and makes a fine conversational companion for Triss Merigold. Yennefer enjoys the young sorceress’ company much more when she has something to distract her from sneaking those little pining glances at Geralt when she thinks no one’s looking. Even Avallac’h looks rather pleased, pinching the stem of the wineglass that he’s nursed demurely all night. 

The Aen Elle sage takes his time concluding his business with Ciri. Even now, he’s all business. At length he rises from the table and moves majestically onward to his usual mysterious pursuits. 

Yennefer wastes no time rising from her seat and sinking down into the chair that Avallac’h had occupied next to Ciri. It’s still warm.

Ciri’s cheeks are flushed with wine and her grin fits loosely on her lips. The girl’s old enough for wine _and_ assassination of Aen Elle commanders. Gods. “Hello, mother! Cheers me?” 

Ciri tilts her mug toward Yennefer. Yennefer left her glass at the other end of the table, but she’s not about to disappoint her daughter. She conjures a wineglass and taps its newly-created rim to Ciri’s mug. 

“Imlerith dead. My, my. Quite the feather in your cap, young lady.”

Ciri gives a bleary shake of her head. “Well, if I’m being quite honest. Geralt did most of the work on that one. But I take credit for the Crones.”

“The Crones of Crookback Bog?” At Ciri’s nod, Yen has to steady herself. “Ah. So uninspired by Imerlith that you chose to challenge mad demigods instead?”

“Why not? I knew Geralt had it in hand. Besides-- once I know how to use this _Elder Blood_ everyone’s always going on about, I’m meant to be something of a demigod myself, aren’t I?” 

The wine doesn’t disguise Ciri’s bitterness. Yennefer keeps her expression attentive, unrippled. 

“Demigod lessons come later. Let’s aim to make you a decent witcher first, hm?”

The tension relaxes from Ciri’s shoulders. That word evokes such a response from her-- it never fails to raise her chin and bring a proud twinkler to her eye.

“I’m proud of you,” Yennefer continues. “You haven’t contented yourself to be Avallac’h’s obedient little pupil. You’ve risen to the uncertainty of these times. I am so pleased by your progress, in fact, that I’ve spent hardly any time wondering why you hid your plans from me.”

Ciri winces. “This was something I had to do on my own.”

“But you weren’t on your own, were you?”

“I mean…”

In general, Yennefer enjoys watching people squirm as they struggle for words under the weight of her gaze. It numbers among her favorite sights, closely matched by the first unveiling of new megascope crystals or the different unveiling of Geralt or Eskel or both at once removing their garments at her request. But this is Ciri, and Ciri’s discomfort is no pleasure. Yennefer mercifully provides the words for her. “You mean you wanted to exact your revenge with swords. Not with magic.”

Freed of the words she could not say, Ciri is able to lift her eyes to Yennefer’s. “Yes.”

Yennefer smiles. Ciri. Cirilla. She can almost see the young ashen-haired girl who once terrorized the priestesses of Melitele with her Kaer Morhen training. How many teachers she’s had since then-- how many lessons and would-be destinies have been thrust upon her, and how many worlds she’s traveled in order to escape them. 

“You never did enjoy our studies,” Yennefer says.

“Some parts, I did.” Ciri looks down at her hands. “And I have used your lessons! Many times.”

“Have you? Can you recall an instance?” 

“Well. I once healed a gravely wounded unicorn.”

Yennefer feels her eyebrows rise so sharply, they stretch the skin of her forehead. “A unicorn. Well done.” She wonders if a fondness for the beasts runs in the family, but she doesn’t mention it.

“Yes,” Ciri says, but she avoids Yennefer’s gaze and shifts her weight in her seat. “And hopping between worlds and whatnot-- that requires the same draw of energy, for long jumps. Please don’t take offense, mother. Whenever I’ve truly made my way… when I’ve felt proud of what I’ve done… it’s because I’ve used a blade. Not magic.”

Yes, Yennefer refrains from saying. There is beautiful brutality in that weaponry, isn’t there? Control is direct, muscle-bound, indisputable. Swords do not rely on the presence of arcane ingredients, nor ley lines, nor any sensitivity for the unseen. There is a strengthening simplicity in mastery of the physical and the visible. All manner of creatures and enemies have pursued Ciri in her lifetime, wielding every kind of power imaginable. Ciri might lay claim to any of these powers for her own, but after all these years of evading murderers, emperors, psychopaths and sorcerers, she has chosen a weapon that the world can see strapped to her back. How could it be otherwise? The invisible will never feel like enough. She has rejected Aretuza, embraced Kaer Morhen and its overt brutality, which had belonged to men alone. It is not a rejection; it is a taking back. 

I understand, Yennefer thinks. Against reason she finds herself waiting for a response. But Ciri is not a sorceress, has chosen not to be. She does not hear thoughts. 

Yennefer continues for herself alone: Become powerful, Ciri, however you can. May you outstrip your enemies. Lay claim to a power strong enough to protect yourself and those you love so that you will never stand in a mage’s dungeon or an incinerated clearing, offering your hands. 

“I’m sorry,” Ciri says. She’s taken Yennefer’s long silence for regret, grief, or perhaps jealousy. “I’ll not forget what you taught me.” 

Yennefer smiles, rubs her hand along Ciri’s back. “I’ve no fear of that, my dear ugly one. Only--”

The table jumps beneath them. Geralt and Eskel are pounding the other end of the table with one hand each. Their other hands are locked in an arm-wrestling hold, veins bulging in their forearms. They must’ve been at it for some time now-- Geralt’s face is flushed, Eskel’s breathing open-mouthed.

“--I hope you’ll refrain from copying your father and uncle in all that they do,” Yennefer finishes with a suppressed sigh.

Ciri scoots a few inches closer on the bench, as if that little distance will afford her a better view of the contest. “Unlikely! They do this often, no doubt?”

“Oh yes. Many times.”

“Who’ll win, then?”

“An excellent inquiry. It depends.”

“On how much White Gull they’ve each splashed about?”

“No. On Eskel’s intentions. On choice occasions, he’ll allow Geralt to believe he’s won.” 

Ciri wrinkles her nose. “They’re a competitive lot. I can’t imagine either of them losing on purpose.”

“Ciri, propriety forbids me from teaching you everything about men in this instance.”

Ciri’s eyebrows unfurrow and she gives her head a quick shake. “Right. That’s much more information than I wanted to know.”

“I couldn’t leave your curiosity unsated.”

“Ha. Perhaps next time I can endure a little frustration! What a funny little madness. You know, I’m quite glad that I prefer women.”

Yennefer drapes her wrist over Ciri’s shoulder. “In that arena, my dear, your wisdom surpasses mine.”

They clink mug to conjured wineglass once more and lean back to enjoy the show. 

* * *

“And now,” Dandelion trumpets, “ladies and gentlemen, a special performance by none other than--” and for no reason at all, Eskel remembers that it’s been a few hours since he’s last thought about Caranthir. The count’s been getting longer and longer. He almost made it a full day not long ago. Tonight, it’s been… yeah, about two hours. Dandelion had poured him a shot of that flower booze and grazed his hand along Eskel’s back. Eskel hadn’t seen it coming and the touch jolted him, brought Caranthir’s voice into his head with a snippet of _beg me not to--_. Dandelion had lifted his hand, apologized, said he ought to have known better after all these years of watching a witcher’s instincts at work. Eskel had grinned, said no worries, Geralt’s instincts barely count. A lie and a dumb one, too-- Geralt’s special attention from the mages has made him the most advanced specimen in their little freak pack-- but Dandelion doesn’t know that, and he giggled anyway. The man actually giggles. It’s oddly charming.

A couple hours since the last flash of walls walls walls. Does that count as “doing better”? Hard to imagine a time when he’ll never think about it. The thing’s ingrained in him now, a heavy dust ground into his bones. Could be that the best he can do is live with it. 

But hey. Living with it means nights like these: Geralt who still hasn’t built up his left arm, free booze, a warm common room, Yen catching his gaze every now and then with a scorching wink, Ciri flushed and happy and looking so damned grown up as she throws her head back laughing at something the lady bard’s said. If this is what it’s gonna be like-- that ain’t so bad.

The lady bard’s up on the stage now. Beautiful voice, that one. Looks like Ciri’s noticed, too. Eskel sneaks glances at her through the first couple of songs, observing and gathering information the way he’s been taught. When he’s sure he’s made the right identification, he leans across the table and nudges Geralt with his elbow, juts his chin in Ciri’s direction in answer to his questioning look. Geralt only takes the length of a chorus to recognize that look on his daughter’s face. They share the knowing smiles of old men at a Beltane dance who can already predict who’s going to the fields with whom by the end of the night, before the young people even know that something’s started. 

“Dandelion might wanna watch out,” Eskel whispers. The sound’s mostly lost beneath Priscilla’s song, but Geralt catches it. 

“Dunno,” Geralt whispers back. “Might do him good, seeing the other side of the cuckold’s horns.” 

“I dunno how you manage to keep friends. You’re shit at it.”

“Not in the beginning. You put in work the first ten years. After that, they’re stuck with you.”

Eskel folds his arms over his chest and mouths _shitheel._ Geralt raises his mug in salute and drains the contents. 

Priscilla’s song ends, and they both turn to raise their hands in applause. So does the rest of the common room and none more so than Ciri, who’s jumped to her feet and hooting as if Priscilla’s on the other side of the city and not fifteen feet away. Dandelion takes it all in stride as he struts onto the stage with assured swagger. If he notices Ciri’s adoring stare, he makes no sign of it. There isn’t even a dirty look thrown Geralt’s way. Kinda disappointing. 

As the two bards tune their lutes, watching each other’s fingers to match chords, Eskel considers that there was never reason for Dandelion to worry about Ciri in the first place. They match each other, these two peafowl. They fit. 

Dandelion settles onto a stool, Priscilla plucks the first string, and they launch together into a duet. Their voices spiral around each other the way birds do in springtime, drawing infinity loops in the sky. Eskel tries to find the word for it, settles on ‘gorgeous.’ Tricky little harmonies and rhymes that come as pleasant surprises. He could like this. Geralt’s onto something, making friends with bards and people who make beautiful things. For the first ten years, anyhow.

The common room erupts into applause and the two bards start up another tune. This one’s about an ice prince and a summer princess who can only meet on the equinoxes, a wistful little love song. It’s lilting and pretty, and stanza by stanza it sifts something itchy and bothersome under Eskel’s skin. There’s no reason for it, so he ignores the feeling and applauds with everyone else at the song’s end. 

Geralt kicks him under the table, swipes his eyes toward Ciri. Ciri literally has her hands clasped together over her chest. Geralt grins and Eskel tries his best to return the expression. 

The next number is another love song. This one’s familiar, usually played as a more rollicking number around a campfire. But Dandelion and Priscilla have slowed the arrangement down, made it syrupy-sweet. He can hear the ache they’re trying to put in the story, how beautiful it’s supposed to feel when the priestess of Freya falls in love, the stir in the chords when she and her warrior beloved kiss for the first time. 

‘Cept it dips his tongue in something brackish, makes him want to spit. Dumb story, the idea that a kiss could change that much. He should be able to shrug it off as the usual bardic exaggeration but something about it rubs grit into his nerves. This song ends, the people applaud. Geralt prods his calf under the table with his foot but Eskel pretends not to notice. 

And of course, what comes next but another fucking love song. Eskel shoves himself into a different position but it doesn’t shake the itch under his skin. A hot violent urge. 

The hell? Senseless. Calm down. They’re bards, singing-- bards sing, that’s what they do. All the usual tripe about moonlit trysts and passionate promises and first kisses and-- and there it is. The love in their songs, it’s unrecognizable. That’s not how it is and the arrogance of the lie fires him up, makes the lutes look ripe for Igni. He’s wiping his hands over the course of their words and it’s leaving dirty fingerprints behind. If he walked into that kind of love, he’d track in dirt and the scent of blood. It would stink like animal hide for weeks. 

No more moonlit walks in the garden or wearing fancy clothes to impress a maiden at a ball. Where’s Path-worn love? Love armored with foglet teeth because it’s grown predatory to survive. The love he knows is stained, tarnished, the plate dented and patched a hundred times. It’s a worn bedroll: look at the frostbitten place I imagined you warming. It’s scars: look at the shit I outlived so I could come home to you. He listens for that love. Grows savage to hear it. Their pretty songs flit and float. There’s no dirt in them. The smallest claw would split open their love’s butterfly wings, leave it splayed and wriggling. To be devoured.

...by him. He could devour it. He wants to see those lutes smashed open ‘til their string and wood guts litter the stage. He wants to crush those songbird wings, watch them choke on the silky little nothings of their baby-skin love. 

Eskel looks around. These intent faces. Those moon-eyes. Ciri propping her chin in both hands. People want to hear about this kind of love. It’s not the problem; he is. 

The taste on his tongue, he recognizes it now: shirt fabric, sweat, his own skin. Caranthir’s gagged him with it. His teeth clamp down and won’t bite through. Animals sound like this, huffing their idiot grunts. Caranthir fucks him like he’d butcher an animal: it’s just meat.

Eskel’s shadow jerks on the wall. On some distant plane he’s standing up, but his shadow’s pushed down, shoved into, can’t move. 

“Eskel?” someone-- Geralt-- says. 

“Need some air.”

“Alright. Do you want--”

“No.”

He’s moving somewhere. A blur. The air changes to something cooler, darker, and more open, and Eskel starts to breathe again. Geralt might run after him, so he turns west and walks, boots in the center of the street, brushing up against nothing so he doesn’t leave a scent. Trackless. Let him vanish, nothing but night air. 

He passes a few streets before he can feel himself in Novigrad again. 

Two hours he’d gone without thinking about Caranthir. Oh well. It can still take up all the room in his head, weeks later. No reason for it. Eskel lost the fight; to the victor go the spoils. And it’s not like it was the worst pain he’s ever felt. Didn’t even bleed much, by witcher standards. 

The streets here are never totally empty. There are drunks stumbling with loose limbs or leaning against walls and standing still. Beggars sprawled in the usual listless despair. Folk hurrying past with their heads down. Women with long planes of exposed skin shining in the dim light, standing at corners and waiting. 

=======================================================================================

These folk out late, the other night creatures. Maybe they’re like him-- folk who don’t belong indoors, can’t talk to people anymore without feeling a fraud. Filthy feral things too mangled to look at. He’s moving slowly now, letting his eyes wander in case he catches the gaze of someone hurrying by. Geralt and Yen, they won’t get this. Another stray might. He might be able to say: hey, friend, lemme tell you about this bad _tryst_ I had. Ha, ha. Got chained and tortured. That’s what we’re gonna call it. Burned his cum into me so I wouldn’t forget. That woulda been easy. It’s like he’s trying to kill you, right? Treat it like any other fight-- watch his timing, brace or go limp to take the hit for as long as you can. All you have to do is live through it. That could’ve been alright, ‘cept he didn’t stop there. After he finished, he jerked me off. Used magic to tease the cum out of my balls. Ever had a mage light you up like that? It feels good. Even if you don’t want it, it feels good. You want it to be like a fight, but you don’t have any fight left-- so you give in, you watch yourself get hard. You end up finishing all over yourself and he burns that into you, too, in another color so you’ll know the difference. He makes you watch yourself finish. And after that, you’re not yours anymore. 

Eskel isn’t his own anymore. Caranthir’s left something in him. It burns like the scars of his own cum and he’s rabid to dig it out, open every vein and suck it out like snake venom if he has to. After that he’ll cut his cock off so it can never turn traitor again and take the hunting knife to his own chest and stomach until every scar’s ripped off. He’ll keep cutting until he’s gouged out every trace of Caranthir.

Only, all of it belongs to Caranthir now. He good as wrote his name on it, clear for anyone to see. Yen and Geralt still try to hold that Caranthir-branded body soft-like, gentle, but they don’t get it. This skin is enemy territory. Come to it with intent to destroy, or don’t come at all. Eskel would do it himself if he could, but he can’t control what happens to this body, lost the right to. That’s obvious now.

But gods damn. Caranthir’s infected him, and now he’s so full of pus he’s drowning on it. He has to break open, and someone else has to do it, or the abscess will grow teeth. He’ll become vicious, devouring. Can already feel it.

=======================================================================================

He steers Caranthir’s body west, through the streets full of drunks, beggars, and whores to the docks. 

* * *

Geralt drums his fingers on the new varnish of the table. The main door of the Chameleon hasn’t opened for the past half hour, when the last patron stumbled out. The fire’s dying in the hearth and only the innkeep’s still here in the common room as he puts away the last of the cleaned mugs.

“Need anything else, cap’n?” the innkeep calls from behind the counter.

“No thanks, Mikkel,” Geralt says. “Might be awhile yet. You go on to bed. I’ll lock up again if anyone comes by.”

Mikkel nods. “Figure the boss man’ll be alright with that. Waiting for your…” His hand moves in an abstract gesture.

“Yeah. My…” Geralt repeats the gesture.

Mikkel comes out from behind the counter, moves a chair a few inches closer to its accompanying table. “Can’t imagine much around here that’d give a witcher trouble. Sure your man’ll be along once his work’s done.” 

Geralt remembers how Eskel had looked when he left: eyes distant, no armor, no swords. “Depends on the work.”

Mikkel tucks in his lips and dips his head in agreement, like he’s got any idea what witcher’s work is like. “He’s taken a few jobs in the time he’s been here. Always comes back tracking in dirt, mud, guts, devils know what else. Do me a favor and remind him to wipe his boots this time, eh?”

“I’ll do my best. You know these strays.”

Mikkel’s lips and eyebrows lift in the knowing smile of a man who’s tended bar for decades. “Don’t I just. Much obliged, cap’n. Have yourself a good night, now.”

“Good night, Mikkel.”

Then Geralt’s alone in the darkening common room.

Time passes. Geralt’s not sure how much. When the knock at the door finally comes, Geralt finds himself shaking off the lingering haze of meditation. 

He’s at the door in seconds. The familiar smell of Eskel hits him first, softens him in a sudden shock of relief. It’s followed by a stranger’s smell and when Geralt opens the door, he finds two men on the Chamelon’s threshold: a thick-bodied shirtless man and Eskel drooped in the grip of his arm. 

The stranger takes a breath to speak. Geralt drops to a crouch before he can start. “Eskel.” Quick sniff and skim with his eyes. There’s a trace of blood in the air, but scratches only. It’s swamped by the chemical sting of cheap booze, sweat, and a whiff of saltwater. 

Eskel lifts his head. His breath stinks of bottom shelf rum, the kind that’s sold in the real shitholes by the docks. He’s got a busted lip, light bruising on his forehead, nothing major. Eskel grins at Geralt all lopsided and loose-lipped and Geralt realizes why he’s being half-carried home by a stranger. He’s falling-down drunk.

“Hey Wolf,” Eskel slurs, “ain’t you up past your bedtime…?”

“Yeah. Waiting for your stupid drunk ass to show up.” 

“Mm hmmm, Yen’s gonna be maaaaad…”

Geralt straightens to get a good look at the man who’s dragged Eskel home. Big fella, burly, Eskel’s type. Thick beard, bare chest and arms inked dark with tattoos. The biggest one’s some kind of tentacled sea creature that takes up most of his chest and rounded stomach.”Sorry if my friend’s caused you trouble.”

The man holds up his free hand. “Ahh, sometimes a man’s gotta get the fight out of his system. Happens to the best of us. Only, your pal’s got enough for my whole crew.”

“Really.” Eskel, starting a bar fight? Sure, it’s happened. Last time it happened, this sailor wasn’t born yet. They’d been young, full of fire in the belly, and Eskel’s plan for every tavern visit had been to start a fight, a drunk singalong, or a threesome. All three, if he could. Eskel hasn’t been that man for a long time. “Hmph. We gonna get a bill for broken tables and barstools, Eskel?”

Eskel slurs something incoherent. 

“Ahem,” the sailor says. “You mind if we…” He juts his chin in the direction of the door.

“Oh, sure. Let’s get him in here.”

Geralt slides himself under Eskel’s other shoulder. He usually likes Eskel’s bulk, but not when it’s dead, flopping weight that he has to drag into Dandelion’s inn. “You mind telling me what happened?” Geralt grunts as the two of them drag Eskel toward a bench. “I’d ask him, but…”

“Haha. Better luck asking a dead man! Surprised he’s still breathing, tell you the truth. Never seen a man drain that much rum in one go without losing his guts.” They unload Eskel onto a bench and the sailor stands up with a long exhale and a grateful roll of his shoulders. “Well, let’s see here. Night’s been murky, if you follow me. I saw him at the Nowhere Inn, if the grog’s not wiped my senses. He was getting his grog on like his belly’s the Pontar, right? He runs his mouth off to the crew of the Naiad. Rough lot. They don’t take kindly to your pal’s introduction, and next thing you know, noses are getting smashed. Innkeep was none too happy about the stains on the counter.”

Geralt frowns. “We only need one Lambert, Eskel.”

Eskel’s head rolls on his shoulders. “Lambert’s a smart kid,” he mutters. “Know what he said to me once-- this was just after you met Yen-- I was feeling kinda confused ‘bout the whole thing-- he comes up to me, and he says--”

“Okay, okay.” Geralt pats Eskel’s shoulder more firmly than he needs to. “Yeah, sounds like he was a real charmer. I’ll check out the damage at the Nowhere tomorrow.”

“Well.” The sailor’s fingers vanish into the thickness of his beard as he scritches his chin. “Nowhere got off alright, if you ask me. It’s the Water Witch you’ll wanna look into.”

“The Water Witch? Never heard of it.”

“No one has. Little out of the way place down by Crippled Kate’s. He headed there after the Nowhere kicked him out. Got him all fired up again. If Melitele herself came down, he would’ve thrown a jab at her.”

“Great. Sounds like we’ve made new friends all over Novigrad.” 

A thought itches at the back of Geralt’s mind. The sight of Eskel’s distracting, sprawled, bruised and ready to pass out, but eventually he finds the source.

Geralt keeps his face neutral. “Two taverns trashed in one night, huh. Awful nice of you to watch out for him after the first one.”

“Ah, well. Always follow the party, eh?” The sailor ducks his head and the beard splits into a smile that’s a little something at the edges. Something he doesn’t like. Geralt freezes. He knows it before he knows it-- it’s in the sailor’s eyes as he sneaks a look at Eskel flopped over the bench, and if Geralt inhales, this time deeper, he might find buried beneath the reek of bad rum and salt sweat--

Geralt grabs the sailor by the throat. Tendons tighten in his grip but Geralt’s faster, doesn’t give the other man time to tense up or fight back before he’s shoved up against a support pillar. The wood shudders. 

“What did you do,” Geralt spits.

The sailor chokes. He’s staring into Geralt’s eyes, with the look they get when they see the irises clearly for the first time. Too late those animal reflexes kick in but Geralt uses his weight, his elbows, the single purpose of his killer’s body to pin that flabby mass in place. 

“Degenerate fuck,” Geralt growls. “Know what I do to--” His grip on the man’s throat tightens. “-- _things_ like you?”

Behind him: “Geralt.”

Geralt doesn’t look away from the sailor’s prey-wide eyes. Can’t ignore the scent he’s picking up now that it’s just this man in front of him, this man who has no reason to smell like Eskel’s concentrated sweat and the pheromones that only rub off from-- “What do you want me to do with him, Eskel. Say the word.”

“Want you to let ‘im go. Ain’t what you think.”

A gathered tension in Geralt’s chest gives way, crumbles. He releases his grip, ignores the sailor’s wheezing breaths as he turns. Eskel’s leaning his elbows on the table, fighting through the slack-jawed looseness of too much rum. The expression that finally emerges isn’t exactly regret. 

Geralt controls his breath, forces the question through a tightened jaw: “Then what is it?”

“It’s fine. Let ‘im go. Tell you after.” 

Nobody moves. 

“C’mon,” Eskel says.

The sailor croaks behind him. Geralt turns. The man’s rubbing his throat-- even his fingers are tattooed. Those fingers that will still smell like Eskel if he’s close enough. The rest of him, too, in the dark curly body hair that catches sweat. Eskel’s scent is smeared all over the body of this dog-eyed human stranger. 

“Want to hear it from you,” Geralt says. He’s being conversational. The sailor’s smell changes anyway. The dog eyes dart around Geralt. “He’s not talking to you. I am.”

“Geralt.”

Geralt ignores Eskel. The sailor’s staring at him, snared. “It’s alright,” Geralt says and tastes the inhuman snarl in it. “All you have to do is say what happened. Simple. So say it.” 

“W-well.” The sailor swallows. “Like I was telling you-- we were in the Nowhere, and he got all fighty, and--”

Geralt shifts his shoulders. The man flinches back against the pillar. 

“I’m losing patience.”

“And, and, and, and--”

“And what. And _fucking what._ ”

“And I, and I, and he-- and--”

Coward weakling human shitling, _this_ is who Eskel chose, _this_ is what he wanted more than he wanted--

“Geralt!” It’s a word full of fangs and Eskel’s there, yanking his shoulder back so Geralt has to whirl to catch his balance. 

“What!” Geralt snarls back. Instinctively they step away to make distance and they’re facing off, poise and coiled movement, bared teeth and yellowed eyes--

“I wanted it.” 

Geralt stops. The animal in him forgets to breathe. “What?”

Eskel’s shoulders drop. The maimed lip hides more of his teeth. “Fuck. Geralt, I wanted it. A’right? I went lookin’ for a quick fuck and I got it. Even had to work ‘im up to it. That good enough?”

The silence fills with the sailor’s heartbeat, pounding fast, and Eskel’s, much slower, too slow. Like a dying man’s.

Geralt’s has slowed, too. He’s fighting to keep his feet as Eskel shifts the ground beneath him.

The tension drops out of Eskel’s muscles all at once. He looks ready to pass out again, but it’s with the weariness of an old man. His tired eyes find the sailor. “Time you headed back, Kjeld.”

The sailor’s been given permission to move. He takes it. “Right. Then… I’ll be off.”

He slinks past Geralt as if he’s expecting a blow at every step.

“Hey,” Eskel calls softly. “Thanks.”

No human voice answers. The front door opens and closes again. The only sounds left are the slow thuds of heartbeats mutated to a crawl. 

Eskel, Geralt thinks. It’s all he can think. The name has never weighed so heavy. Eskel, Eskel. A lonely tolling. 

Geralt wets his lips. Says finally, “You wanted him to?”

Eskel won’t meet his gaze. “That’s what I said.”

Geralt stretches for the sense of this. Bends near to snapping and still finds nothing. “I don’t understand.”

“Pretty sure you do, Wolf.”

“Then why?”

Eskel turns his back and for a moment Geralt knows he’s walking away, leaving Geralt in the dark empty common room. Nothing left but his smell and a lonesome tolling. 

But Eskel’s hand lowers onto the back of one of the benches and he falls heavily into the seat. Moors himself there so every limb droops. 

“Had an itch to scratch.” 

“An itch.” 

Geralt slides into the bench on the other side of the table. Eskel flicks his eyes up, drops them before there’s a risk of meeting Geralt’s.

Geralt doesn’t know what this is. Yen might. The thought’s like acid-- for decades, he’s been Eskel’s translator. He knows each kind of silence, grunt, and look, can remember the five or ten or ten thousand times he’s seen each look before. The names of born, ruling, dead kings blur into a stream and Eskel’s always been there, a warm presence in the dark Kaedweni nights. This Eskel, though-- he’s more of a stranger every day. 

Yen isn’t here. Geralt is and Eskel must be, too, somewhere in that resigned body.

“Tell me,” Geralt says.

“Nothin’ to tell.”

“Yeah, there is. You got an itch to scratch, why not scratch it with me? With Yen?”

Eskel’s finger picks at a notch in the wooden grain of the table. 

“Not that kind,” he mutters. 

“What kind, then?”

Eskel slowly shakes his head.

“Fuck’s sake.” Geralt reaches halfway across the table, flattens his palm against the wood. “Talk to me. You smell like pickled drowner brains. You get dragged back here in the middle of the night. For what? Some saltwater prick?”

Eskel looks up. There’s a sick look in his eyes, a fever glare. “You jealous?”

Geralt can hear the answering snarl in his throat: yeah. You couldn’t look at me for a week. Wouldn’t let me touch you for a week after that. Now you come to bed with me but half the time you’re somewhere else. What you leave behind has teeth. Like right now. You look like you wanna cross swords, no armor, no Quen, fight for keeps. And tonight you walked out there blind drunk, gave it to a stranger.

“Maybe I am,” Geralt says. He keeps his voice level. Won’t give into this angry-eyed thing with snapping teeth. “We haven’t done that since…”

“Since what?” Eskel leans forward. The cat-eyes catch torchlight passing the window. “Not sure what you mean. Since _what_ , Geralt?”

“You know since what. Since Kaer Morhen.”

“So what.” Eskel shrugs one shoulder, a quick brutal jerk. 

“So maybe I’m a little surprised.”

“Surprised I’d get an itch?”

“Well. Yeah. After…”

“After what?”

Geralt’s teeth ache, they’re clenched so tight. “You _know_ what.”

“Just come out and fucking say it,” Eskel snaps. “Grow a pair, huh? You an old maid now, scared of bad words? Think you’re gonna hurt my feelings?” 

“No. Don’t wanna see you wallow in them.”

Dark eyebrows, thick jaw, yellow-flashing eyes, that scar. Eskel’s gone to some underworld, come back with a demon’s glare. “I’m in the mud and shit now. Right down at the bottom. That’s how it is now.”

“That what you want? Want me to scream at you and call you a piece of shit?”

“Maybe you should.”

There’s hellish fire in Eskel’s glare, a glimpse of an abyss. A plea, too. 

“Don’t think so.” Geralt pauses, breathes. “Hm. Just remembered something.”

The fire’s dampened by a quirk of an eyebrow.

“Mikkel wouldn’t let you track mud and shit in here, anyway,” Geralt says. “I was supposed to remind you to wipe.”

Eskel blinks. Blinks again. Tilts his head, a little wobbly, to peer under the table at his boots. “Huh. ...guess he got lucky.”

That’s all it takes. They breathe again and it’s just them, the way it’s always been. The presence of some beast has passed.

Geralt stretches his arm across the table. He flattens his forearm against the wood, inches the tips of his fingers toward Eskel.

Eskel looks down as if he’s studying Geralt’s knuckles, the topography of vein, bone, and joint. His own arm is heavy as he drops its weight into the planks, closes his big warm hand over Geralt’s. 

Eskel, Geralt thinks, and enfolds the curl of Eskel’s fingers in his. Eskel. 

“Call me crazy,” Geralt says, “but I’m starting to worry about you.”

Eskel’s offers a vanishing little smile. “Sorry. Don’t mean to make trouble.”

“You’re always trouble. It’s why I keep you around.”

“Yeah. So you’ve got somebody else to blame.”

“Or to back me up. Look what happens when you’re not around.”

Eskel nods, wise and agreeable. “You get into some wild shit on your own. Surprise Elder Blood Child. The Hunt. Dunno why we let you wander ‘round unsupervised.”

“You shouldn’t.”

Eskel smiles at the rough pile of their joined hands. “Y’know, Zoltan told me to keep you out of trouble.”

“Zoltan’s a good man. A good dwarf. You ought to keep your word to him.”

Eskel’s mouth presses tight. The small muscles there shift, tighten, and loosen again. 

“I, uh.” Geralt exhales. “I shouldn’t’ve been that angry. With your drunken sailor.”

Eskel huffs softly, dips his head toward one shoulder. “Nah. I shouldn’tve…” His mouth is still shaped as if there’s a sentence to finish, but he bows his head until his forehead rests on the table. 

“Fuck, Wolf,” Eskel mutters into the table. The wood thrums faintly with the low rumble of his voice.

Geralt folds his thumb against Eskel’s fingers. “It’s alright,” he says, low, soothing. “You’re alright. We’re alright.”

Eskel sighs and it’s a gust from a coal mine, a whiff of the lightless and buried. He raises his head, just barely, enough to lean his weight on the table with one elbow. 

“Hey,” Geralt says. “Try to kill yourself again, and I’ll come after your stubborn ass. I’ll kill you twice.” 

“Yeah? Whattaya gonna use, steel or silver?”

“Neither. Gonna stake you down and use you as forktail bait. Might as well be useful.”

“Then hide ye in nearto shrubbery?”

“Posthaste.”

Geralt can’t remember half the contracts he took last year, yet he can still quote Brother Adalbert’s bestiary word for word. They’ll be quoting it at each other into their 300s, if they live that long.

“Hnph,” Eskel grunts. “Poor bastards must be starvin’ if I’m their idea of a treat. You’ll be waitin’ a long time.”

“I can be patient.”

Eskel lowers his head, presses a mangled impression of a kiss to Geralt’s forearm.

“I wasn’t tryin’ to kill myself.” He whispers it, a tickle of breath against Geralt’s skin.

“No?”

“Psh. In a bar fight? C’mon. Plenty surer ways to do it.”

“That’s true.” Geralt brushes his thumb up and down the planes and valleys of Eskel’s fingers. “Then…”

“Then why?”

“Yeah. If you can.”

Eskel turns Geralt’s hand over, exposing the palm. He ghosts the tip of his nose along the pale delicate skin of Geralt’s inner wrist, inhaling him, almost closing in to kiss the veins once or twice but always a breath too distant.

“I had to break something,” Eskel murmurs. 

Geralt crooks his fingers up. The distance is just short enough that he can brush the pads of his fingers against Eskel’s jaw. “Like in Daevon. The time someone stole your horse. Remember?” 

He can feel the skin of Eskel’s jaw crease with his smile. They are not young men anymore. Back in Daevon, they’d barely had any scars. “Heh. Good times. Nah, not like that. Was just drunk and pissed off then. This time…” 

Eskel closes his eyes, rests his forehead on Geralt’s inner arm. The weight of that thick skull pins Geralt’s arm against the table, pinches something uncomfortably. Geralt doesn’t move. 

“Once upon a time, there was a rotfiend.”

“What?”

“Thinkin’ of something your bard said.”

“Don’t call him my bard.”

“Your minstrel. Your herald. Whatever.”

“More like my pain in the ass.”

“Sure.” Eskel winces with the effort of finding words. “I’m tryin’ to say somethin’. I wanna say it.” 

“Take your time,” Geralt says, but he’s off-center with the newness of this. Eskel doesn’t say much, not like this. Closest he came was when Yen entered their lives. It had taken a couple years for them to sort it out, and even then they’d used silence as much as words. Eskel’s creaking like new armor, he’s so unused to talking. And Geralt’s not used to hearing him.

They’re both trying.

Eskel’s still got his eyes closed when he starts uprooting words, yanking them up muddy and tangled. “There’s… rot in me, Wolf. When that mage did what he did, I thought I could walk it off after. Like everythin’ else. Time heals all wounds, right? Not this one. This one, it’s infected. It just gets worse. Turns everythin’ in me to rotfiend guts and I’m chokin’ on it-- all that pus and shit and rot, and I’m tryin’ to burst, but it’s in me. I can’t get it out.”

All Geralt can do is hold Eskel’s hand. 

Eskel opens his eyes. They’re tired now, ancient. It makes Geralt’s heart pause to see the burden in those eyes. 

“That sailor,” Eskel says in a voice that grates and drags on the earth, “I wanted him to get real rough. Make it hurt. I wanted to hate it and then come limpin’ back here like…”

Geralt flinches. He remembers what Eskel looked like that night, kneeling on the flagstones of Kaer Morhen with his arm wrapped around the new scars on his stomach. Ragged and dead-eyed. Eskel would have looked like that. 

“Did he. Make it hurt.”

Eskel rumbles a humorless chuckle into Geralt’s arm. “You met ‘im. Looks mean at first glance but he’s a puppy. Might’ve been his first time on top, even. He went real gentle and kept apologizin’.”

“Good. ‘Cause you know I would’ve killed him.”

“Yeah. I know.”

I’m sorry, Geralt would say if this were anyone else. But it’s Eskel, and neither has any use for the other’s pity. 

“Imagine Dandelion’s face in the morning if I had,” Geralt says instead. “Bad enough he has to pretend to be nice to Yen every day.”

“Yeah, I was wonderin’ ‘bout that. Some kinda bad blood?”

“Not really. She saved his life once. They just… value different things.”

“Heh. Sure. Okay.”

They sit in the sound of each other’s heartbeats.

“Is it always like this for you?” Geralt asks. “You always gonna have an itch for the docks, or something set you off?”

A muscle in the back of Eskel’s neck twitches, which means yes. Geralt waits. Waits until his forearm twitches and he has to squeeze Eskel’s hand twice quickly in succession. “Lift your head a sec, big guy. Might need that hand someday.”

“Oh.” Eskel lifts that iron-heavy skull with an effort. “Sorry.” 

“No problem,” Geralt says. Pins and needles rush into the indent that Eskel’s forehead has made in his arm. “But you do all the swordwork next job.”

“Deal.”

“So.”

“So…” Eskel breathes out. “Guess it was your bard. He’s not a total idiot.”

“You noticed?” 

“Took a lil’ while. He works hard to make the opposite impression.”

“Usually succeeds. Especially in the worst possible circumstances. What’d he do now?”

Eskel winces. “Wasn’t his fault, really. Was those songs. The two of them up there, singing.”

“That offended by their music? Didn’t take you for an elitist.”

Eskel shakes his head, serious now. “Was just thinkin’...” He takes a breath first. “You and Yen got a few ballads followin’ you around, don’t you. White Wolf, raven locks, that kinda thing. I’ve heard a few. And it makes sense. You’re good together. Yen, y’know. She’s perfect. And you’re, uh...”

Geralt’s got a few wisecracks ready but Eskel’s shaking his head, blinking down at the table. For the second time tonight Geralt knows something before he knows it and his hand closes tightly around Eskel’s, insistent, like it’ll stop what comes next. 

Eskel wrinkles his nose, hard, quick, clearing out a bad smell. “I was thinkin’. Could be that’s the way it oughta be.”

“Eskel. Stop.”

“Listen. You and her, that’s real. That’s destiny.”

“Hell with destiny. You get to choose, too. And we chose you.”

“You shouldn’t.” There it is. Eskel vaults it between them and doesn’t let go of Geralt’s hand but his eyes, they’ve become ancient again, older than Vesemir’s and heavy enough to sink them beneath the earth. 

“The hell, Eskel. Stop talking like a crazy man.”

“C’mon. The White Wolf, the Lady Yennefer… and me?” Eskel scoffs but it’s a hopeless sound. “Ain’t anybody gonna write a love song about me.”

Geralt wants to growl: what does that matter.

And: I will. To hell with the Path-- after we deal with the Hunt, I’ll spend the next five years learning how to play a godsdamned lute. I’ll write you a hundred shitty love songs if that’s what you want.

And: Eskel. Eskel. Eskel. Eskel. 

“Stop,” Geralt chokes, and Eskel looks at him with those century-old eyes, and Geralt sees it. He’s holding Eskel’s hand as if Eskel’s about to fall into a swift-moving river, the river’s roaring in the darkness below and Eskel is slipping, falling--

\--and Geralt remembers when it was him with his hand on the ledge. How many times has he done this with Yen? Eskel had loved him for decades before she arrived, though they didn’t use the word until much later. Geralt could tolerate a witcher’s plain bed, a body as mutated as his own, nights of touching in silence. But the love of a powerful woman who demanded the silence filled-- that had been impossible to accept, and he’d found a hundred little ways to destroy it. And then came Aedd Gynvael when Yen had wanted to hear a simple set of words, that alone, and instead he had nearly destroyed it all forever. Geralt has done this before, decided he’d rather break something than be tender enough to accept it.

“Eskel,” Geralt says. It’s all he can do at first, say his name and hold that scarred, calloused hand to his forehead. He’s gripping Eskel for dear life. Down there, the black river is roaring. It will carry you down, Eskel, get you so used to living without air and light that you’ll forget you’re drowning.

He grips Eskel’s hand, wordless insistence. “Eskel. You wanna break something, fine. But don’t you break this.”

Eskel shakes his head again. His eyes have changed, old still, but between angry and pleading. “Look at me. Take a sniff. You don’t want this.”

“Don’t tell me what I want.”

“I’m tellin’ you what’s real. You’re lookin’ at rot and shit. There’s nothin’ else left.”

“No. No, no. Known you a hundred years. You’re more.” He thinks of Mikkel’s gesture, a palm describing empty space. “You’re my choice.”

And now Geralt’s grabbed Eskel’s wrist with his other hand because Eskel is doing what Geralt did so many times-- he’s trying to pull away. 

“No…”

“No.”

Their muscles tense, the tendons bulge, and it’s like hours ago when they arm-wrestled in the lights, the music, the crowd, except no one’s here. They’re wrestling alone in the dark. 

“Look at me,” Geralt says. Eskel doesn’t, can’t. That big arm pulls and Geralt can’t let go, he has to win this time. He only sees one way how. So Geralt ignores the squawk of Dandelion’s protest in his head and pulls himself onto the table between them, knees clambering onto the wood, boots knocking against the bench behind him, clumsy and awkward, and the sheer absurd romanticism of it shocks Eskel’s eyebrows up so he forgets the dark river below for a single bewildered moment and that is all Geralt needs to curl himself on his side, grip Eskel’s hand and slide himself across the slick new varnish of the table and into Eskel’s startled embrace. 

“The hell?”

“I’m here,” Geralt says. He grips Eskel’s hand, latches their arms together like they’re wrestling again. “I’m right here and I’m not going anywhere. So you gonna shut up and kiss me?” 

Eskel’s eyes glint. Amusement and something else, melting the ancient weight that’s bowed his shoulders. “Hm,” he hums, as if seriously considering the choice. He chooses well.

In Geralt’s arms, against his lips, Eskel trembles. It’s a little tremor of the shoulders but after the decades, the Trials, the Path, the mage, the callouses and scars, a world could begin in that shiver. It’s enormous; it’s enough.

* * *

“Hey, boss-man.”

Dandelion looks up from the sheaf of parchments that is absolutely an organized file of receipts, records, and reports, and absolutely not a stubborn half-written poem sitting atop a frenetic heap of receipts, records, and reports. “Ah, Mikkel! What can I do for you this evening, my friend?”

Mikkel grimaces. “Well, what you can do for this poor lowly _employee_ is see to the gentleman at Table Five. He’s asking to see the proprietor of this establishment.”

“Ahhh,” Dandelion says with decidedly less enthusiasm. “Of course. I am ever delighted to see to the enjoyment and satisfaction of all our patrons.”

“Good luck with that.” Mikkel disappears from the office doorway and misses the proprietor’s dazzling smile. 

Compelled by no small sense of dread, Dandelion rises from the desk and tries to remember which one is table five. Luckily, it’s no great struggle once he enters the common room. The patrons busy themselves with Gwent, dice, and foaming mugs of ale in a general atmosphere of merriment. The only exception is the table near the stairs, next to the window, where a well-dressed gentleman sits glowering with his silk-clad arms crossed over his brass-buttoned chest. The woman sitting across the table from him stares out the window, her chest and shoulders lifted as if she’s bubbling over with an unreleased sigh. 

Dandelion clasps his hands as he approaches. “My dear lord and lady!” he cries. “We’re delighted that you’ve chosen to grace the Chameleon with your presence this evening. Tell me, how are you faring in our establishment tonight?”

“Terribly,” the man grates. His eyebrows quiver with a particular salt and pepper venerability. 

Dandelion gasps. “A travesty. An abominable stain on our honor as a sanctuary from the world’s troubles and a haven for the arts. Please, tell me more.”

The woman hasn’t looked away from the window. She still doesn’t as her companion pushes his half-eaten plate across the table, earthenware scraping heavily across wood. 

“Take a gander at that,” the man harumphs.

Dandelion leans over the table to peer at the remains of half a chicken. “I see that you’ve chosen the chicken this evening.”

“That,” the man says, his mustache bristling like the hackles of an indignant boar, “is not chicken.”

There is no one to congratulate Dandelion on the heroic effort with which he maintains his expression. “...oh?”

“Think you’re clever, you lot. I’ll have you know that I’ve dined at the tables of the finest noblemen in Vizima. I thought I’d found an establishment that values refined sensibility in the culinary arts. And what do I find but a filthy corner tavern pretending sophistication as a night-walking tramp pretends modesty!” 

“Your lordship!” Dandelion cries. “You wound me! You strike at my very heart and, yea, it trembles! I would sooner fall upon my sword than allow a patron of mine to suffer indignities! Come, come. Let us plumb this mystery together. Not chicken, you say?” Dandelion peers at the remarkably chicken-ish remains. “What clues betrayed the deception?”

“The taste.” 

The door bangs open. Dandelion’s spine snaps him upright of its own accord and he means to cast a righteous glower at whatever drunkard’s decided to disturb the pace. Only, when he turns toward the Chameleon’s front door, he sees not a drunkard but Geralt of Rivia, followed by the witcher Eskel and a battered and bleeding woman leaning on him for support, and last of all Yennefer of Vengerberg. 

Geralt reacts first, naturally. Damn those reflexes! “Dandelion, do you have any bandages?”

“Banda…” Dandelion stares at Geralt’s boots. He and Eskel are both begrimed with brackish slime. There’s a distinctive smell of sewage and it’s now tracked all over the common room floor. “Ah-- yes, I do believe we have bandages somewhere, and-- Geralt, would you like to tell me what’s going on?”

Yennefer closes the door behind them and whirls on Dandelion. That violet glare still makes him cringe. “We’ve chosen to train in the underappreciated art of swine wrestling. Damn your foolish questions, man! This woman requires assistance!” 

The amateur food inspector scoffs at his table. “Look at the riffraff they let in,” he mutters to his wife. “Jewel of culture, indeed.”

“Mm hm,” his wife hums at the window. 

“One moment, my cherished friend,” Dandelion says to the undeceived culinary sage. “Mikkel! Fetch some bandages, please?”

At the counter, Mikkel flips his cleaning rag over his shoulder. “Right away, boss.” He’s moving briskly but calmly, bless him.

Dandelion tries not to sigh. He’s the owner of the establishment, so he has a responsibility to project a persona of calm competence to his patrons. “Right. Let’s move this young lady up the stairs, shall we?” For she is young-- or, he reminds himself with a glance at Yennefer, appears young. Rather fetching, if one ignores the latticework of bruises and cuts. 

Eskel and the apparently-young-woman take a few limping steps toward the stairs before she whimpers and clutches her side. “Please. Let me sit a moment. I just need… a moment’s rest...”

“Okay,” Eskel murmurs. Dandelion has to double-check that it is in fact Eskel. The low, kindly voice is that of a completely different man from the one who single-handedly decimated his vodka supply. “Here. Can you make it to the table? Here we go.” The two of them limp to an empty table. Table three? Or table seven? Dandelion always gets them confused. 

“Geralt,” Dandelion says, “may I have a word?” 

“Now?” Geralt shrugs. “Fine. Why not.”

Dandelion waves Geralt toward another empty table, but the man at table five frowns. 

“Are you just going to walk away?” he grates. 

“Of course not.” Dandelion hopes he’s disguised the flare of panic. He’d forgotten about the burgeoning chicken scandal. “Mikkel--” Dandelion grimaces. No one’s standing behind the counter. “Ahh, but calamities do converge. Where’s Priscilla? Geralt, my most excellent and stalwart friend, you wouldn’t mind fetching Priscilla, would you? There’s my true and trusted comrade.”

Geralt just stands there, which isn’t helpful at all. “Why would I know where Priscilla is?” 

Yennefer looks up from table three or seven, where she’s seated herself opposite the allegedly young woman smearing blood on the table. “Try the kitchen, Geralt. She and Ciri have taken to haunting the place regularly.”

Geralt and Yennefer share a look. One might even describe it as a telling look, though what it tells, only those two know. Or so he thinks until Eskel sees it, too, and looks away from them with the trace beginnings of a smirk. Correction: only those three know. 

“Right,” Geralt says, and finally takes himself to the kitchen.

“As I was saying.” Dandelion returns his attention to the poultry questioner. “Yes, please, do go on. My sincerest apologies for the interruptions.” 

“What else might one expect from such an illustrious clientele,” the man sneers.

Dandelion’s smile dazzles forth with nary a quiver. “I believe we were last discussing the flavor profile of tonight’s dish.”

“Yes, yes. As I was saying-- before these constant interruptions!... I hold myself to certain expectations. My wife and I are not demanding folk.”

“Oh no, certainly not. I see that quite clearly.”

“And we rarely indulge in the decadence of dining, quote unquote, out on the town.” 

“Quite right. Such opulence.”

Another door swings open, and out come Priscilla and Cirilla from the kitchen. They’re all giggles and broad smiles and Geralt follows behind them, looking only a little flustered. 

Priscilla throws her hair behind her shoulder and saunters, still laughing, to table five. “And hello to you, dearest buttercup. I hear you’ve need of me.”

Dandelion tilts his head toward he of the quivering mustache. “Our esteemed patron has just endured a harrowing experience with tonight’s dish.” 

“Oh no,” Priscilla says, but her wide smile has yet to fade. “Fear not, I’ll see to it! Now, sir, let’s see about this incident with tonight’s fare.”

While the Chameleon’s least demanding diner details his grievances to Priscilla, Ciri takes a seat with Yennefer, Eskel, and the bruised woman who hasn’t received her bandages yet. Dandelion passes them by, waving Geralt in the direction of an empty table as far from prying ears as they can get. 

“Geralt,” Dandelion begins, “you know that I value your friendship above all other treasures that the gods might see fit to give me.”

“You’re an atheist, Dandelion. You don’t believe in the gods.”

“You’ve always been a quick study, Geralt. Can you tell me why, exactly, you’re dragging strange bleeding women out of the sewers and into my inn?”

“It’s a long story.”

“No doubt. Be so good as to share it with me. I’d love to review it for narrative possibilities while I scrub your sewage and muck from the floorboards.”

Geralt has the good graces to look chastened. “We rescued her. Not many safe places in these parts, so we brought her here, to stay with us.”

“Is that meant to be helpful? Details, Geralt! Who is she, and how did she come to be held captive, and what undoubtedly malevolent force imprisoned her, and do they know the address of this inn?”

“Her name’s Margarita. She’s a sorceress. We sprung her out of Oxenfurt Prison. We jumped through a portal to escape. Don’t worry, they can’t track her here.” Geralt frowns. “I think.”

“That’s certainly reassuring. A recent prison escapee and fugitive. Damn me for asking, but why exactly are you rescuing captive sorceresses and bringing them to my humble establishment?”

Geralt exhales. “We’re reconvening the Lodge of Sorceresses so they can help us fight the Wild Hunt.”

“Oh!” Dandelion laughs. “Oh, is that all? Well, of course, my friend, I’m happy to host renegade mages wanted by the emperor of Nilfgaard for treason. By all means, bring them all to the inn that I have only newly acquired and renovated! Invite their friends! They can keep their pet demons in the stables.” 

“Don’t get hysterical, Dandelion. They know enough to stay undercover.”

Not much can lead Dandelion to suspect the existence of gods, but if anything comes close, it is the convergence of random events with the timing of a carefully orchestrated symphony. Like the time that that lovely blonde threw Dandelion out onto the street at the exact moment that Geralt of Rivia happened to be strolling by. Or a moment such as this, when a woman in a fine lace frill appears on the stairs just as Geralt finishes speaking. She’s an odd sight, carrying herself with the strict upright posture of royalty even though her dress, though exquisitely wrought, is less than a noblewomen’s finery, and there’s a cloth band tied tightly around her eyes. 

“Innkeep?” the blindfolded woman calls down the stairs. A few of the Chameleon’s patrons spare her glances that turn into sidelong stares.

“Geralt,” Dandelion whispers, “you wouldn’t happen to know who this woman is, and why she’s parading about in a blindfold? She’ll break her neck!”

Geralt clears his throat. “We rescued her, too. And-- she doesn’t have eyes anymore.”

“...I beg your pardon?”

“Radovid gouged out her eyes.”

“Radovid? As in King Radovid of Redania?” Dandelion stiffens. “Wait. _Geralt_.”

The bruised woman at table three or seven-- Margarita-- lifts her head at the sight of the blindfolded woman on the stairs. She gasps. “By the gods...” 

The blindfolded-- blinded-- one tilts her head, guides herself down the last few steps with her hand on the railing. Dandelion sucks in air but she does not trip and break her neck in a tragic blind-walking incident. “Who’s there?” she calls, tilting her head to hear better.

“It’s me. Margarita.” The bruised woman stands up and rushes to her. “Phil? Is that you?”

Dandelion turns slowly to Geralt, who’s studying a wall in the opposite direction. His voice is a hissed whisper. “Phil? Geralt, is that who I think it is?”

Geralt covers his mouth with his hand. “Um. Yes.”

“Of course I’m alive,” says Philippa Eilhart, advisor to kings and leader of the Lodge of Sorceresses. “Did you think a piddling little man could kill me? Even a king?” 

“Never. Ah! Oooh. Gently now, gently…”

Phillippa Eilhart, whose Wanted poster currently lines the streets of Novigrad, loosens her embrace. “Ah, my sister-- I see they have abused you, too…”

“Geralt.” Dandelion pronounces each syllable with exacting precision. “Did you bring Phillippa Eilhart to my inn.”

“Yes.” 

“Without telling me.”

“...yes.” 

Dandelion watches the two sorceresses as they limp back to table three or seven, where Eskel scoots aside to make room on the bench and Yennefer drapes a protective arm around Margarita’s shoulders. “I see. And how long are they staying here?”

“Uh. Shouldn’t be long now. Recruited all the sorceresses we know in these parts, so we’ll be off to Skellige soon.”

“To battle the Wild Hunt.”

“Yeah.”

“I see.” Dandelion heaves a sigh. “Well, old friend. You know you can always call on me to assist you in your dizzyingly numerous times of need. I ask only two favors.”

“Go on.” 

“First-- come back here once you’ve eliminated the spectral menace from the heavens and tell me how it went. Everything that happens, in actual detail. Understand?”

“Try my best.”

The memory of Geralt’s best attempt at detail draws another sigh from Dandelion. “Needs must. Second-- whether it’s this life or the next, whether I’m still a virile young man or a doddering octogenarian, whether it’s for you or Ciri or anyone else of your acquaintance-- may I request that you never put me in this position again?”

“Dandelion.”

“Geralt, I’m not asking you to swear. I wouldn’t hold you to a promise you can’t keep. But I’d like to note a compassionate yet highly insistent request, for the record.”

“Alright. I hear you. And… thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Dandelion sighs. “Really. Ever again.”

They both stiffen at the sound of Ciri’s voice, hard and loud: “You take that back, you miserable cad!”

The rest of the common room’s gone quiet. Dandelion and Geralt turn at the same time. Ciri’s standing in front of Priscilla at table five, her hands on her hips and a familiar fire in her eye. It presages immediate trouble. She’s leaning forward looking for all the world as if she intends to choke the Chameleon's most refined customer with his own half-eaten chicken carcass. Priscilla leans away with her fingers pressed to her mouth. It seems that negotiations have not gone well. 

He of the dubious fowl raises his chin. “I will not retract an obvious truth.” His haughty eyes run up and down Ciri’s appearance, and his lip curls with disdain. “And certainly not for some vagabond harlot.” 

A bench scrapes along the floor. Yennefer and Eskel have stood up at the same time and Philippa needs to catch herself against the table as Eskel pushes the bench aside with a shove of his hip. Geralt closes ranks and the would-be restaurant critic finds himself staring up at a petite raven-haired woman flanked by two armed, armored, and freshly sewer-splattered witchers. 

For the first time, the man’s wife turns her face from the window. Her eyes blink wide at the trio. “Oh my.”

“Apologize.” Yennefer’s voice is ice. “For your surpassingly unfortunate slip of the tongue.”

The man’s eyes move from Yennefer to the witchers and back. Three gazes glower back, each a different shade of unnatural. His pride hasn’t melted away yet but his face is making room for a more primitive emotion. “Who’s asking?”

“The parents of this young lady, whom you have just insulted.”

The primitive impulse wins. The man swallows as he looks among the three of them, gaze flicking faster. “ _All_ of you…?”

“Yes,” the sorceress and two witchers reply in unison.

Priscilla’s shrinking back. Ciri looks at the three of them as if she can’t decide if she’s embarrassed or savagely satisfied.

The man wets his lips. “Well, I. May have. Misspoken.”

Eskel and Geralt shift their weight forward, matched viper eyes burning.

“I’m sorry!” the man squeaks. “My apologies, I don’t know what I was saying, very unfortunate mistake, very sorry, please…”

Dandelion squeezes his way between the bench and Geralt. “Ahem. Well! What lively conversations we enjoy here at the Chameleon, eh? Among the most interesting and diverse clientele in Novigrad! So glad we could resolve this all peacefully. Good sir, perhaps we might conclude our discussion in my office?” 

“...yes.” The proud chicken taster rises from his bench with ducked head and lowered gaze. “Yes, a splendid idea indeed…”

“Come along,” Dandelion says soothingly. He shoots Geralt a scathing glare as he guides the man around the trio with a hand between his shoulder blades. The man doesn’t look up from the floor once.

The office door closes with a click, and scattered conversations pick up around the common room once again. A few sound disappointed. 

Ciri raises her chin. “You needn’t have interfered. I could handle him.”

“We know,” Eskel says.

“Ahh.” Geralt shrugs. “Let us old folks have a little fun.”

Priscilla lays a tentative hand on Ciri’s shoulder. Ciri turns toward her with a smile.

Yennefer nods deeply at the woman who’s still sitting at the table with the disputed half-chicken. “Enjoy your meal.”

Philippa tilts her head. “What just happened?” 

“Ah,” Margarita says, “Yenna and her family are practicing their usual charm.”

Heavy footsteps approach and then Mikkel emerges from the backroom with a fistful of bandages. He pauses at the threshold of the common room, the instincts of a veteran barkeep alerting him to a tension that lingers in the air. He looks about and makes his assessment quickly. 

“Ah, hell,” Mikkel sighs. “I missed something, didn’t I?”

* * *

There’s a quiet down deep that Eskel knows. A silence that doesn’t beckon, doesn’t pull, vanishes sometimes beneath the obliterating blur of movement and rush. The body forgets it. On busy days it feels like a hallucination-- surely nothing could ever be that still. But the mind empties all on its own sometimes, forgets to busy itself with frantic mouse-scampers, and in the calm between thoughts the quiet opens. A night sky that thickens outward. 

Here in the quiet of early evening on the balcony of the Chameleon, Eskel’s almost got it. Novigrad fades, the weight of his own bones and body fades… he starts drifting free…

“...much less from _you_!” a woman screams. A door slams. The wood shudders at Eskel’s back and he returns to the solidity of his body on the balcony bench, sees again the sprawl of rooftops and a glimpse of the harbor beyond. 

Ah, well. Almost got there. Eskel rotates his wrists, plops his palms onto the tops of his thighs. And Lambert still asks why he avoids cities. The smells of the city float up to him and he takes them in, a little reluctant. More vegetal smells today-- sweet apple skins, cabbage. Wind must be moving in from the west, over the market. 

The sound of the footsteps come first, light and rapid. Then there’s the slight shudder of the wooden floor underfoot. Eskel turns his head, timing the thud of footsteps until the door flings open on cue and Ciri stomps out onto the balcony. 

“Rarrkgh! Gods!” She slams her foot into the wall, whirls, and nearly trips over his extended legs.

“Whoa. Hey.”

“Oh. Hello, Uncle. At least _one_ of you isn’t spying on me.” Ciri sweeps both hands over the top of her head. She’s still too restless to sit but she sticks close to him as she paces back and forth along the balcony wall. 

“Hrm. Your mom and dad read your diary again?”

Ciri’s eyes flash but she sees the wry twist of his mouth and she almost smiles herself. “Please. I learned early not to indulge such foolishness around them. Bad enough that my mother’s always stealing peeks into my mind.”

Eskel nods. “And you’ve figured out how to deal with that, right?”

Ciri comes to a halt. “Why? Is there a special witcher’s trick? A Sign?”

“Sure, you can call it that. Think of the most annoyin’ song you know. Then think it as loud as you can.”

She grins. “I can’t believe I’ve not thought of that. Come, Uncle, out with it. What tunes will rescue me from my mother’s prying?” 

“Hm. She hates that one ‘bout the farm animals. Y’know: _and the rooster, he goes hey, and the ducklings, they go hey_. If it’s for kids, she’ll hate it. Oh, and anythin’ by Dandelion.”

“Ha! Ah, she’ll rue this day. I’ll think nothing but children’s songs dawn ‘til dusk. But don’t worry. I’ll not reveal my source.”

“‘preciate the thought, kiddo. But she’s still your mother. Not much use hiding anythin’ from her. You go ‘head, throw me under the carriage when you need to.”

“I’ll never forget your sacrifice.”

“Mm hm. Set a place for me at Saovine.” 

“With the finest goat stew and strongest spirit.”

“Ahhh, kid. I don’t care what Lambert says. You’re a’right.” 

Ciri flops onto the other end of the bench, slouching so that her legs extend far in front of her, like Eskel’s. Her heartbeat’s a tad slower. It’s the little victories. 

“Speakin’ of spirit.” Eskel tilts his head, looks at her sidelong. “Off to Skellige tomorrow.”

Ciri sighs. “Yes.”

“Feel ready? We could build you another Pendulum on the ship. Get in some more practice.”

“Practice for what? Avallac’h doesn’t want me anywhere near the battle.”

“Nah? What’s all your trainin’ for?” 

Ciri shrugs and looks away.

“Hey. Don’t worry ‘bout it. Plenty of time to swing a sword after.”

“Yes.” Ciri presses a hand to her forehead. “That seems all I do, whether I will it or not.”

Eskel nods and hums. Not much to say to that. He can’t remember a time when he had a choice other than be armed or be dead. She was a princess before, but for so short a time it can’t matter now that she’s got a scar so much like Geralt’s, a sword of her own, and destiny snapping at her heels. 

Ciri swipes her fingers across her forehead in a quick angry motion and settles her arms over her chest again. “It’s always been that way. Even before I was born. Child of Surprise.” Her lips move. There’s no word for that look-- not a smile, a grimace, a snarl. Some combination of all three. “I’ve always been moved at someone else’s behest. To be an heir, a political pawn. A _womb_.” That last a curled snarl.

Eskel nods again. Doesn’t know what else to do for her but listen and show her he’s listening. “Never your choice.”

“No.” Her chest moves up and down with the heave of a silent breath. “It never has been.”

Because someone’s always stronger, he thinks. Someone can chain your wrists together and make your body a deaf dumb thing. Afterward you remember how to talk, lose the surprise when people hear you, use swords like something that makes choices, but you don’t forget-- you were meat once. You go on and pretend to be a person, but you’re braced for those chains again. The gag. Those walls. 

“It can be,” Eskel says. Each word’s a stone he carves. He’s building something he wants to be true. “Your life-- it’ll be yours after we beat ‘em. No more runnin’. You’ll be free.” 

“Will I?” High and plaintive. “It seems someone always has plans for me. The emperor still does. Emhyr. The Hunt. Even the Lodge.”

She stops and stares at him suddenly. Eskel raises his eyebrows. “The Lodge?” 

Ciri looks down at her feet. She digs a booted heel into the planks. “They want me to help them revive the Lodge. And then join as an equal partner. Ha. Nevermind that they were plotting to marry me off to some princeling for the sake of an alliance, all those years ago. Forgive and forget!”

“Ah.”

“Don’t tell them. Please.”

“Your mom and dad?”

“Who else?”

“Why would I tell ‘em? None of their business.” He allows a pause. Says with emphasis: “It’s your call.”

Ciri exhales, a harsh whoosh between a sigh and a sob. 

“My call,” she echoes, tentative, wondering. 

Imagine that, he thinks. Your own choices controlling your life. You can live like that.

Ciri can. A child of the Elder Blood, fated before her parents even knew they’d made her. And if she can--

The thought comes to him in a rush like it's a prank he's dreamt up for Geralt, wild and mutinous. If she can, why can't he? He's been calling this mass of blood and bones Caranthir's body. Caranthir's not here. Caranthir doesn't make his arms lift, his legs walk, his chest belch. This isn't Caranthir's body. Doesn't much feel like his own, either, but fuck-- the man’s taken enough from him. Every time Eskel invites harm his way, tries to dig out memory by tearing at his own flesh, he lets Caranthir take a little more. This body belongs to either Caranthir or Eskel, nobody else in this equation. So who's it gonna be? 

Alright, then. He feels his cheek dip with a grin at his own foolishness. It’s you and me, body. I don't have to like you, but I’ve got a mage to kill. So we gotta make this work. Truce?

“Whatcha thinkin’?” Eskel asks.

Ciri tilts her head up for a better view of the clouds. “I’m wondering what Cerys is doing in Kaer Trolde.”

“Heh.”

Ciri snaps her head toward him. It’s a gesture she must’ve borrowed from Yen. “What?”

Eskel rubs the scar on his cheek. “Eh. Nothin’.”

“Nothing. Right.” 

He’s shit at hiding a smile, but she doesn’t say anything. 

Eskel and Ciri lean back against the bench and watch the clouds over Novigrad’s rooftops. They’re fitting themselves into the newness of choice. Imagining what might happen if they can make their lives their own.

* * *

Geralt is not looking at Yen. Yen is not looking at Geralt. They are both carefully not looking at Eskel, who’s been sitting on the edge of the bed and staring at the floorboards for the past several minutes in silence. Sometimes his fingers set to tapping on the otherwise neglected goblet in his hand. 

Eskel clears his throat. That’s also happened several times in the past minutes but this time, he speaks. “I was thinkin’.”

Yen stirs, only enough for a lock of her hair to fall the other way over her shoulder. “A promising start.”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Geralt says.

Eskel huffs through his nostrils. “Yeah, so. Things in bed. Summa them don’t work anymore. Nothin’ to do with you. Just my head.”

Geralt’s jaw shifts. Yen’s eyes soften. Eskel’s still staring at the floorboards and doesn’t see it.

“I, uh. Used to think that’s just how it’s gonna be now. Busted up. But then I got to thinkin’... some parts’re better than others. I can tell you what’s good. What’s… off. And uh. I think maybe. It could be good again.” Eskel looks up quickly. 

Geralt’s smiling. “Wanna make you feel good.” They’ve used that phrase since they were in their twenties, after someone left a two-crown romance on one of the shelves in Kaer Morhen. No one ever claimed responsibility, but it had a strange habit of disappearing and reappearing in a slightly altered position. 

“Splendid.” The two of them know Yen well enough by now to notice the affectionate cushioning she gives the word. “Do tell. We’re all ears.”

Eskel takes a deep breath. “Don’t like lyin’ on my front. Don’t like anythin’ behind me. Don’t like bein’ on my knees. Getting. Getting jerked off. Not good, either.” He can’t look at them.

Geralt speaks gently, with the tone he uses for children and rock trolls. “Mouth still okay?”

“Mouth’s great.” 

It’s excruciating. It’s needed. 

Eskel’s diaphragm lifts, pulls deep. He can look at them again. Yen’s inclined her head, curved her lips, directed her purple eyes into him and through him as if to say: yes, good, this is what we want, give it to us. 

“Any places we should avoid,” she says, those lips smiling, those eyes intent, “generally speaking?” 

“Don’t grab my hair. And.” Eskel’s hand drifts down to flatten his shirt against his stomach, over the scars. “If you touch here. Be gentle.”

Geralt’s mouth flattens against his question twice before he can ask it. “Do you still want it. Inside.” 

Yen pierces him with a sharp look. Eskel’s shoulders drift up and down with breath before he answers. “Let’s leave that alone for awhile.”

“Of course,” Yen murmurs. A teasing lilt returns to her voice. “You’ll just have to do, Geralt.” 

Geralt grunts but he’s grinning. “Hmph. Only if we use the good oil. The chamomile.” 

“So demanding! Very well-- as long as you behave.” 

Eskel’s grinning, too. “I’ve got odds he can manage that. Can’t you, Wolf?”

Geralt’s looking between the two of them, back and forth. Rarely subtle, Geralt. Something always telegraphs his moods and if it wasn’t his intensifying heartbeat in this instance, it would be his dilating pupils, his chest readying itself with air.

“Anything else?” Yen asks delicately. “If so, I believe I’ve a helpful thought.”

“Sure. Go for it.”

“We’ve the imperative to establish a sense of safety, yes? To eliminate the presence of negative connotations. Well. I’m confident in the positive associations of one implement…”

Geralt and Eskel exchange glances.

Yen’s expression flirts with the boundary between a smile and a smirk. “One particular four-legged implement.” 

“Oh yeah,” Eskel says. “I forgot to mention.”

The other two raise their eyebrows.

Eskel continues: “Yeah, he brought those in, too. I got fucked by a whole herd of unicorns.” 

The silence falls deep.

Then Geralt doubles over laughing. Yen stares at him with undisguised horror.

“Ouch!” Geralt has to brace himself with his hands clenching his thighs. “A whole herd. Tough guy like you. They use their cocks or their horns?” 

Eskel never grins this wide. “Their hooves. They all just lined up and donkey-kicked me in the ass.” 

The two witchers rock back and forth braying the most hideous laughter and it’s all Yen can do not to slap them both to their senses.

“They must’ve,” Geralt wheezes, “must’ve been… really…”

“Don’t say it,” Yen warns.

“...horny!” 

Geralt and Eskel howl. They don’t even know why they’re laughing anymore but that makes them laugh harder.

“I still can’t take a shit!” Eskel wails and neither of them can breathe.

Yen crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re a mess, you two lunatics. Barking mad.”

“Eh heh. Heh heh heh.” Geralt drags his palm across his forehead. “Come on, Yen. It’s hilarious.”

“No, it is _not_. It’s sickening.”

“Hn hn hn hn.” Eskel reels toward her like a drunkard. “No, he’s right. It’s about the mental image. Go ahead and read me, Yen. You’ll laugh, trust me.”

“You want me to read you?” Yen’s incredulous. “Now? Are you certain?”

Eskel lowers his head as if he plans to headbutt her. “Never been more certain. Come on.”

Yen exhales, reaches out with her mind, and--

“Oh my gods,” she shrieks, and that sets them braying and rocking again. 

“Just,” Eskel laughs, “just, the point is--” He can’t finish.

“He can’t,” Geralt wheezes, “our poor beloved Eskel, see, he can’t, heh heh heh...”

Eskel has to clap a hand to his chest to keep it all in. “I’m wounded!” he cries. “I’m all emotionally cut up over here and just lookin’ at a unicorn, you know, it’s too much for me, I’m gonna lose it--”

“--lose his mind, go all battle-crazed--”

“--prolly spray Igni everywhere, be a godsdamned mess--” 

Yen’s eyes narrow. Now she sees the game they’re playing. “Oh no, you don’t. Geralt’s done his sly best to scorch my beast, and he’s yet to singe a single precious hair.”

“Ah, damn.” Eskel’s shoulders are still shaking. “You try Aard?”

“Tried that first,” Geralt says. “She’s warded the damned thing.”

“Hey. That’s no fair.” 

“All’s fair in love and war.” Yen condescends to granting them a little curl of a smile. “And I do love that unicorn.”

“A unicorn.” Eskel presses both palms to his face. He may be the Continent’s worst mummer. “Oh no. Anything but a unicorn. Ahhhhhhh.”

Geralt’s wheezing again. “He’s in pain! Look at what you’re doing to him!”

A swish of frustration escapes Yen’s lips. She flicks her hand, her fingers glow, and then Geralt’s levitating mid-air, one of the blankets still clinging to his leg until it slips the several feet down to the bed. “You’re in time-out, darling. Hush now, the adults are speaking.”

“Really?” Eskel whips around, peering left and right. “Where?” 

Yen sighs. Her other hand flicks and now there are two weightless witchers bobbing mid-air. “Remind me why I selected a pair of matching idiots? You’re lucky I’m in love with you, or I’d despise you both.”

“Hey Eskel. Show you a trick.” Geralt aims his palm at the wall. Aard explodes against the wooden panel and propels his floating body across the room.

“Heyyy, not bad!” 

“Eskel, don’t you dare--”

Another Aard explosion rockets Eskel forward and the two witchers careen together in a crash of bodies and hysterical laughter.

Something pounds against the ceiling. “Quiet down there!” someone yells from the floor above. “Some people are trying to sleep!”

Geralt rolls so he’s floating with his back to the floor. “Sorry, Philippa!” 

The witchers laugh harder.

“Forget it,” Yen mutters. “I’ll finish myself off tonight.” She casts a sphere of silence and lies down, closing her eyes to block out the sight of her witchers mutely wrestling mid-air-- but she’s smiling. 

* * *

Priscilla frowns. Surely the heartfelt poignancy of the verse calls for a falling chord, but then the transition to the lighter notes of the chorus feels forced. Her fingers curl around the bridge of the lute.

“Why does nothing rhyme with ‘wolves,’” she mutters.

The door of the room opens. Dandelion staggers in, throws his cap on the desk, and promptly collapses into bed. He announces something to the pillows. 

“What’s that, my buttercup?” Priscilla asks.

Dandelion lifts his head. “They’re finally gone.” He drops his face into the pillows again.

“Off to Skellige on their mission of justice and retribution?”

Dandelion flops his arm up and down against the blankets in confirmation.

Priscilla lets her fingers dance as they will over the lute strings. “It’ll be terribly quiet around here. Honestly, I’m shocked that you didn’t go with them.”

Dandelion flips himself onto his back. “My loveliest duckling, I’m too old to travel with Geralt. Look what happened just a couple months ago. One visit from Ciri, and next thing you know, some hooligans have abducted me. I was forced to engineer a quick escape and rescue him!” 

Priscilla sets the lute aside, crosses the room, and crawls onto the bed to straddle Dandelion. “Oh, my heroic darling. The bards will sing inspiring ballads of your courage.”

Dandelion lays his hands on her calves. “O pulse of my heart, we _are_ the bards.”

“Oh yes. Isn’t that wonderfully convenient?” Priscilla plants a sweet peck of a kiss on his forehead. “Now tell me, my moonlight and starlight, when they left. Did any of them… mention anything?”

“No. I don’t think they ever caught on.” Dandelion sighs. “As long as you felt compelled to pursue my oldest friend’s daughter, at least you had the excellent sense to be discreet.” 

“The heart has its reasons, honeycomb. And I daresay she was glad for a sweet distraction.” Priscilla presses a softer, longer kiss against Dandelion’s forehead. “Almost as glad as I am for the patient indulgence of my most generous lover.” 

“Mmm.” Dandelion slides his palms up and down Priscilla’s legs. “Your joy magnifies mine, jewel of my heart. Only a husk of a man with a winter wasteland for a heart could deny you your wishes.”

Priscilla runs her fingers down the silky length of his doublet. “And now that our much-loved company has departed…”

Dandelion catches her hands in his and lifts them to his lips.

“Now,” he says, “we can finally get some rest. I’m going to sleep for a week.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Section title from _Macbeth_ :  
> "Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak  
> Whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break."
> 
> The second stage of trauma recovery is Remembrance & Mourning. This part can look a thousand different ways because there are a thousand ways to numb / deflect / avoid / deny the grief that comes with trauma, or on the other hand to obsessively relive it, which is not the same as processing it. The stage isn't complete until the work of grieving is finished, so it's easy to get stuck here. In some ways this is a better-case scenario-- Eskel’s got century-old partners who love him unconditionally and avoid toxic foolishness like victim-blaming, which helps. Presenting male and avoiding the constant triggering objectification that female-presenting people face also makes this part of the healing process easier. But then, there's the self-loathing and the part of masculinity that can't admit weakness or ask for help... I just wanna firmly establish: results vary! 
> 
> I’m gonna be a little weird about replying to comments for this particular fic. Sorry-- I really do appreciate reading comments, hearing your thoughts and reactions!... but also there's more of me mixed into this than usual, so-- takes me to an odd emotional place. This is probably a weird fic to comment on, too. Agree in advance to forgive each other? 
> 
> Thank you for reading. <3


	3. Who we will be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ciri, Eskel, Geralt, and Yennefer face their final battles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re finally here…! 
> 
> No content warnings this time. The tar pit’s behind us; here’s the climb out.
> 
> This part is a lot closer to the video game with some of the dialogue. I would include a link, but… laziness
> 
> <3

And I with them. Not comprehending  
Who I will be when I wake after enduring.  
\--Czeslaw Milosz, “After Enduring”

Bless who we were then.  
Bless who we still are.  
\--Andrea Gibson, “First Love”

“Aha! Well done, Uncle. That was almost fast enough.”

“Almost? You’re talkin’ to an old man, kid. This is as fast as I go.”

“ _Vesemir_ was an old man. You’re just making excuses.”

“Hmph. Learn to teleport, hop a few worlds and you come back knowin’ better than everybody, huh?”

“‘The fool complains while the wise man trains,’ no? Besides, you’re more than welcome to find another tutor who can teach you how to fight a teleporting swordsman.”

“A’right, a’right, don’t get grouchy. But tell you what. When you’re fifty, you can quote the old man at me. Not ‘til then. Deal?” 

“Ha. Fine, fine… if you drop that old man talk. There’ll be no room for it when you face Caranthir. Remember, he’ll teleport behind you. So your stance has to be flexible, like this, as setup for the pivot. Bring your blade up like so... Uncle Eskel?”

“I’m fine. Catchin’ my breath, is all. Come on. Let’s go.”

“Mmm, are you sure? You look exhausted.”

“That’s just my face. Hit ninety and you’ll see.”

“Bah. While we’re on the subject, you _could_ use a shave.”

“Ahh, c’mon, Ciri. We’re in Skellige. Oughta blend in. Thought I’d grow a big bushy beard, put a couple braids in it, some beads… Whattaya say, good look for me?”

“Sure. You’ll be the handsomest vagrant on the dunghill.”

“A’right, that’s it--”

“Ha! Missed!”

“Damn it.”

“I _told_ you, Uncle Eskel! Faster!”

* * *

On the cliffs above Kaer Trolde Harbor, everything roars.

A coast like this must have been born in violence. Ciri imagines jaws big enough to gnaw off a mouthful of continent. The land looks carved by toothmarks, the cliffs a jagged wound filled by the sea. 

Skellige. She’d forgotten how cold it was-- and how beautiful. 

Each morning, Eskel takes her to the western cliffs. The ocean heaves far below but even up here everything’s damp, misted with sea. Eskel’s hair falls wet and heavy on his forehead. He tosses his head to flick it aside. When Ciri scrubs the heel of her hand against her face, her palm comes away slick. 

“Geralt says you can meditate anywhere,” she says. A trace of petulance sneaks through. 

Eskel grunts in reply. 

“Consider me daft for asking, but if that’s true-- why must we douse ourselves like wet cats, again?”

Eskel sinks to his knees, eyebrows drawn to a stern line but his scarred lip betraying a grin. “‘cause you’re a beginner. Beginners need help to focus.”

Ciri snorts but joins him in the damp grass anyway. “Does this count as help-- meditating while cold and damp?”

Viper eyes squint out to sea. “Nahhh. It’s the water. Udas used to say the river’s the best meditation teacher. Said it taught him more than anyone in Kaer Morhen ever had.”

Ciri tilts her ear toward the rolling roar of the ocean against rock. “I imagine he wasn’t the most effective tutor.” 

“Effective? Yeah, if you listened to him. Popular? Nope.” Eskel flattens his palms against his thighs. “A’right. Let’s empty out. ‘member how?”

“I remember what I hear a day prior. I’m not Geralt.” 

Eskel manages to choke down laughter, but he needs a few tries. 

Ciri hardly needs instruction anymore. The routine is familiar now, the closing of eyes, the softening of muscles. Preparation for meditation. She tries to breathe deep into her belly without her abdomen tensing underneath. The muscles harden and refuse to yield. 

Let go, she thinks, as Eskel taught her. Ease up and let go. 

It never seems possible. Like crawling free of her bones. 

With her eyes closed, everything roars louder: the wind, the rustle of evergreens, the pounding sea. She thinks of the colossal weight of all that water, its angry seethe. The ugly, bitten-off cliffs. Nature’s ancient force. And here she is in her frail human body, holding onto small and mortal things. 

The sea roars below. The sound of each wave crashes against her and recedes with something she doesn’t need. Ciri exhales into the roaring, every breath expelling weight. The sea gouges her clean. She’s scraped bleak as the cliffs, barren of all but herself. 

Here, she begins. 

/ /

“Again.”

“You can’t be serious. Look at this. See, my blade’s shaking. I can barely hold it up.”

“Even better. You’ll build some muscle, I’ll get my technique down. Be ready for… the fight.”

“You’ll best him, Uncle. You will. Today, you anticipated my teleports! You’re getting faster all the time.”

“But not fast enough.” 

“Well, let’s return to it tomorrow. We’re late. Imagine what my mother will say.”

“I’ll handle Yennefer. Come on. Again.”

“But I--”

“I gotta. Understand? I gotta. Ciri… please.”

“...alright. But when it gets dark, we head in.”

“Your training ground. Your rules.”

/ /

“Sit on a wasp’s nest, Ciri?”

“Why? Do you see one? I’d look myself, but _someone_ told me to keep my eyes closed.”

“Salright, salright, you’re fine. Just that you’re jitterin’ like a Bastion boy before supper.”

“Can you blame me? All this sitting about... how am I meant to think about _nothing_?” 

“Whattaya mean when you say that? Think you’re gonna hum like a holy man, levitate up to the clouds?”

“You needn’t make fun. I’m only following instructions.”

“Whose?”

“Well. Geralt’s.” 

“Figured. Know how long it took your dad to figure out meditation? Half the time, he wasn’t even trying. He’d sit there making up dirty limericks in his head and tell ‘em to me after.”

“Geralt, a poet? I don’t suppose you recall his compositions?”

“Ahhh, it’ll take more ‘an that for me to sell out your dad. Listen. The trick isn’t thinking of nothing. It’s separating you and your thoughts-- ‘cause they’re not you, see? Think of ‘em like… fog in morning. Looks thick, but ain’t nothing there. All those thoughts and feelings popping up… let ‘em come, let ‘em go. Nothing there but fog.”

“Easy for you to say. You went through the witcher mutations.”

“Ha!”

“What?”

“The mutations don’t do a damned thing to our thoughts and emotions, Ciri. Anybody who says different is… your dad.”

“Eskel, are you calling my father a liar?”

“No. Callin’ him an idiot. He’s gotten better about it… mostly. Anyway. Shut up and let your thoughts go. Don’t get mad when you have ‘em, either. Feel it, let it pass, and come back to your breath. No judgment. Okay?” 

“I’ll give it a go.”

“Yeah. There you go.”

“How can you tell?”

“Can hear your heart rate slowing. 

“Nothing here. Nothing in the world but your breath, going in and out.

“Whattaya feeling now?”

“Blank. But also… calm.”

“There you are. Nothing in there but you right now. The real you.”

“The real me…”

“Can already hear you asking the right question. So let’s have it. Who are you?”

“I’m Cirilla.”

“Cirilla’s a name that your mother gave you. Who is that?”

“I’m… Pavetta’s daughter. Yennefer’s daughter. And Geralt’s.”

“Daughter. That’s a role. Means you’re not anything unless Yen’s around. That sound right?”

“...no.”

“Good. So who are you?”

“I’m a child of the Elder Blood.” 

“So you’re your blood. Say a bruxa came along, drank you dry. Didn’t leave a drop. You wouldn’t be you anymore?”

“I’d be dead.” 

“Mm hm. You’d be a dead Ciri, not a dead Brunhild or a dead Frinna. Something’s you that’s not your blood. So who are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Keep asking. All the way down.” 

/ / 

“Eskel. It’s time to rest.”

“Can’t.”

“I won’t train you another moment. You’ll not defeat anyone in this state.”

“Ciri, I gotta…”

“Look at me, Uncle. You will.”

/ / 

The air is damp with mist on the cliffs above Kaer Trolde. Ciri hears the ocean boom against the rocks and behind her closed eyes, a question echoes: _Who are you?_

A Child of the Elder Blood, she’d told Eskel. That’s what they all see, those who chase her: a resource to be exploited, a weapon to be possessed. But she’s run all these years to prove that she’s more than her blood. If she isn’t that, what is she?

A human, with long-ago elven blood. 

With that answer comes a question in Eskel’s voice, even if it’s her own thought: what’s a human?

A body with skin, two arms, legs, and eyes. Yet some lose an arm or more than that in wartime. Does the loss of an arm mean the loss of humanity? 

No. The body ages, changes, dies. When Tawny Owl scarred her, did she change? Did she become something else? No. The body isn’t essential. It isn’t her.

Her emotions? They flit from moment to moment. They’re volatile, inconstant.

Her mind? Memories fade, thoughts become distracted or frayed. There is one constant about the mind: it always changes. 

There has to be some enduring essence, something of her that doesn’t change…

What of her endures? When she phases between worlds, what moves through time and space and remains itself? 

Something waits to be perceived. Ciri grasps for her own essence, finds nothing, returns to her breath. Inhaling and exhaling, borrowing air and returning air back to itself one breath at a time. 

This is the air that animals have already breathed, isn’t it? When she exhales, her hot breath expels itself into the sea mist. The wind will buoy it upward. Flying overhead, a gull might breathe deep and shrill a cry made of Ciri’s breath, the wind’s motion, the ocean’s vapor. In the hollows of the gull’s body, Ciri and gull and wind and ocean become one--

\--and she is that. The breath of the living as it moves from woman to gull to fish to the man who eats the fish to the tree that he leans against. Every living body borrows the same air, holds it, gives it back, an ethereal inheritance passed from being to being. The breath in her lungs has animated countless bodies before hers and when she is gone, the creatures of another era will breathe it, too-- animals and humans, and beings perhaps that she cannot dream of-- a continuance of life throughout time, and she is one branch of the channels that conduct the current of breath from lifeform to lifeform in a rhythm that never ceases, and it is her heartbeat pulsing in the creatures of the air and the sea and the land and of the past and future and she that flies and swims and runs in the vibrant living web that transcends death and time.

“Oh,” Ciri breathes.

“Ah.” The rumble of Eskel’s voice. For a hallucinatory moment, it is her own. “You see it now.”

“Yes.” 

“Who are you?”

“I…”

In infinity, there are no names. 

“Nothing. Everything.” 

Her eyes are closed, but she can tell he’s smiling. “Exactly.”

/ / 

The mud’s gone cold against Eskel’s knees. Tiny drops of sea mist gather on the hairs of his arms. Details he wouldn’t notice if he were down deep, where Ciri is now. 

Eskel watches her. Slackened jaw, slow heartbeat. Heh. Kid picked up the trick a lot faster than Geralt did. 

All these years later, and Eskel still can’t explain this other side of meditation to Geralt. That it's a lighter way to exist. An awakening so sharp, everything else feels like a dream. 

Eskel vaguely remembers that depth, can almost glimpse the ocean that Ciri’s become. The borders of her self dissolved. Eskel’s never found the right words for that state of mind. In the real depths of meditation, time doesn’t stop. It unexists. 

Hell. Who wouldn’t he kill for that? For liberation from the moment that’s warped every moment since. He’s forced to live, move, breathe with the constant question: how does he keep living in a spoiled skin? Every act has to be an answer: like this. 

If Eskel could sink beneath time, he’d leave that moment behind. Time and memory would blur until the details fade-- walls, torches, pain, the whole tiresome atrocity. Let it dissolve in all of the other moments of this world’s tired history. Let him live without the burden of a past or the need to outlive it. 

Somewhere down deep and a few breaths away, time is absent-- and he is almost there. Even if he can’t reach it, he needs to believe that in the worst moment, some abstract core of him remained out of reach. Caranthir couldn’t pollute everything. 

Eskel has to believe it, so he does. Doubt’s a luxury outside his budget.

Eskel listens to the roiling of the waves against the cliffs and the steady rhythm of Ciri’s heart from an ocean just as deep. 

* * *

The New Port is the busiest tavern in Kaer Trolde Harbor, and fight nights are the busiest nights for the New Port. Sigfast has to tuck his elbows into his sides just to fit on the bench full of sweatied men, most of them boasting new shiners and a couple missing teeth. 

“Ye did well, Sigfast.” Thenorr slaps Sigfast hard on the back. “Longest ye’ve ever lasted against Enok.”

“Aye, sure,” Sigfast mutters into his beard. The fight had been over in seconds. Why hadn’t he seen that left hook coming? Enok always throws a left hook.

“‘Sides,” Thenorr continues, “least he didn’t win the title for the fourth week in a row, eh?”

Across the table, Horst frowns. The torches gouge shadows in his beard so his mouth looks enormous. “Sure enough. Because he lost to a foreigner. A foreigner and a cheat!”

Thenorr scoffs. “A cheat? ‘Ow’s a man gonna cheat at gobsmackin’? We all saw the fight. Was a clean, proper brawl.” 

“Aye. Between a human and a mutant.”

“Ah, come off it, Horst.” Sigfast waves his hand. “Weren’t no sorcery in that fight.”

“Gods’ truth.” Thenorr nods and pauses to thump his chest. With some encouragement, the belch finally comes. “I say, let the witcher fight. Let ‘em both fight, eh? The one ‘gainst the other? Now how’s that for a brawl!” 

“I don’t mind that he’s a witcher.” Horst leans forward over the table. He lowers his voice but he’s still got to shout to be heard over the other conversations. “He’s a beserker.”

Sigfast snorts. Thenorr purses his lips and blows lip bubbles. 

“What gave ye the idea?” Sigfast says. “Did the rest of us miss a fightin’ bear?”

“Looks like I was the only one to notice the beserker marks.” Horst taps his fingers on his stomach and chest. “Didya see those red and blue marks he’s got? They’re ritual scars. Beserkers get ‘em after their final trials, in the caves. They fight each other in bear form and tattoo the cuts, so they stay.”

Sigfast remembers. The black-haired man from the Continent had stepped into the ring. Rike the fightmaster had explained the rules: no cheating, no biting, no shirts. The foreigner had almost changed his mind about fighting, but he made up his mind and the shirt came off. The whole crowd had gone quiet at the sight of those scars: some raked like claws, some ringed in the shape of teeth, and those red and blue scald marks from the gods knew what.

Thenorr looks ready to laugh. “How do ye know that?”

“My cousin saw it once.”

“Ahhh.” Thenorr casts a wink at Sigfast. “His cousin saw it.” 

“Don’t ye laugh! Beserkers can gut ye as men or bears, as they please. That’s what makes ‘im so fast. It’s a cheat, I tell ya.”

“If it’s got ye so riled,” Sigfast says, “why don’t ye go over and tell him so?”

Horst’s frown deepens. “And get me guts ripped out? I like ‘em where they are, thanks.”

“Pffft.” Thenorr raises his mug to his lips. “Ye’re already gutless.” 

“Ya take that back!” 

“When ye go over and speak to the man’s face!” 

“Fine.” Horst stands from the bench.

“I’ll go with ye.” Sigfast stands, too, wobbling as he lifts first one leg then the other over. “I want to see the look he gives ya when ye accuse him of bein’ a bear shifter.”

“Shut yer mug!” 

“Don’t get bit now,” Thenorr says with a smile. He ducks the swat that Horst aims at his head. 

The foreigners sit on the other side of the tavern. Sigfast stumbles the first few steps. Glorious ale, doing the gods’ work to his brainbox. He’s got to weave between tables and crowded benches until he and Horst stagger the last few steps to their destination. The Continentals have gathered a table of their own, the white-haired man, the dark-haired man, and a few other women in outlandish dresses no Skelliger woman would wear.

“Ey, friends!” Sigfast says with a broad grin. Horst hums a low, unhappy note, but says nothing. 

The Continentals look up with blank faces. A white-haired man sits at the end of the bench, though he hasn’t got the wrinkles of an old timer. The black-haired foreigner sits next to him. Now that they’re inside, in the fickle torchlight, Sigfast can see the crags of scars tearing up one side of his face. A black-haired woman and a gray-haired girl sit opposite. 

“Oh, look,” the ashen-haired girl says. “More of your friends, Geralt?” 

Horst rests his elbow on Sigfast’s shoulder. “Ahm… ye sure showed Enok what’s what! Sigfast here’s been tryin’ to beat him for weeks.”

Sigfast shakes off Horst’s elbow. “Ahh, don’t mind Horst. He always exaggerates.” He spares a sidelong glower for Horst. Now that they’re here, of course Horst wants to play nice.

Most of the Continentals turn to the dark-haired man: Eskel, the New Port’s new champion. So Rike had announced his name. Eskel’s scarred lip quirks.

“Sure you’ll get Enok next time,” he says. “Now he knows he can lose.”

“Sure does,” Horst says. “To someone like you.”

Eskel and the white-haired man sit back, a calm readiness to the set of their spines. The back of Sigfast’s neck goes cold for no reason that he can name. 

“Someone like me?” Eskel says, his voice dipping a note lower. 

“What he means,” Sigfast says hastily, “is that we never knew the Continent had, ah…” 

Horst is standing there useless as a pitchfork on the high sea. He’s got to say his own damned foolishness. Sigfast won’t do it for him. But now the foreigners stare at him hard.

“Witchers?” the black-haired woman suggests in a tone sharp as barber’s shears. 

“Witcher beserkers!” Horst spits. 

The foreigners look at each other. There are raised eyebrows, frowns.

“Don’t deny it!” 

Ah, hell. Horst’s deeper in his cups than Sigfast thought. 

“The scars,” Sigfast mutters, low and furious, “ask ‘im about the scars, ye donkey-brain…”

“Scars?” No way he could’ve heard, but Eskel stares at him intently. Too intently. Sigfast’s never wanted to shrink away from something in his life. It’s a new and uncomfortable feeling. “What about the scars?”

“It’s the scars gave ye ‘way,” Horst says finally. “The ones here.” He taps a finger on his own stomach and chest.

The confusion on those foreign faces is gone. It’s hardened into glares. 

The white-haired man stands up. “That’s enough.” His voice is quiet but his eyes-- they’re yellow, the pupils like slits. Sigfast flinches. 

“Geralt. Wait.” Eskel stills the white-haired man with a hand on his forearm. He turns to Horst with his own serpent eyes. “Gave away what. Tell me.” 

“Ahhh.” Horst swallows. Suddenly, he sounds much less confident. “Beserkers, ye know. After their-- yer-- their last trials on their mountain peaks or down in yer caves or what ‘ave ye, ye get that… ahhh…” 

“Ritual scarring,” Sigfast mutters.

“Ritual scarring, right. A,ah, mark of honor, if I understand it right. In the heat a battle, they glow and, ah… give ye the strength of the bear.” He says the last all at once.

The foreigner’s got eyebrows thick enough to suit a bear. They arch high up on his forehead and pull the rest of his face out of shape. 

“You think I’m a beserker. And the scars are my-- power source?” 

“Eh. Yeah?”

The foreigners look at each other. 

“Damn.” Eskel’s mouth twists into a hideous smile. “First time somebody figured it out.”

The gray-haired girl shakes her head. “I told you,” she says, and she sounds on the verge of laughter. “I told you we ought to be more discreet.” 

“You mean…” Horst opens his mouth but the sentence won’t finish. 

“Yeah.” Eskel leans back on the bench. The white-haired man sinks back down to join him. “They’re from the last beserker trials. Gives me a boost in a big fight. Exactly.”

“I knew it!” Horst crows. “Didn’t I, Siggy? Ye heard me say it!”

“I heard ya say it,” Sigfast grumbles. 

“What about it?” 

“Ah…” Horst stutters. “Like we said. A witcher beserker! Thought we’d toast to the Continent’s marvels. Why ‘on’t we get ye a round on us, eh?” 

Horst ignores the glare that Sigfast burns into his head. Horst never has any money. He won’t be the one paying. 

The foreign beserker shakes his head. “Not for me. Gotta stay sharp. Keep the shifts at bay.”

The dark-haired woman scoffs.

“Wise of ya! Wise, wise.” Sigfast throws an arm around Horst’s shoulders and squeezes. Tight. “Well then. Don’t let us bother ya. Cheers to a good fight. We’ll toast to yer victory, eh?” 

Eskel nods once, his mouth still lifted in that scarred grin. “Enjoy that.” 

Sigfast steers Horst away from the foreigners. He can’t get away from their table quickly enough. He’s dizzy with relief once they leave the yellow-eyed men and those strangely dressed women behind.

“Well?” Thenorr asks as Horst and Sigfast slide into their places at the table.

“Beserkers!” Horst slaps his palm on the table. “Told ya, didn’t I? Next round is on you!”

“Huh. That so?”

Thenorr looks to Sigfast for confirmation. Sigfast shrugs once, a gesture of _suppose so_. But he frowns, distracted. He can’t shake the look on Eskel’s scarred face, even as Horst gets louder and louder about witcher beserkers. The expression in those yellow eyes-- he’d call it gratitude, if he called it anything, but that doesn’t make sense at all. 

* * *

Yennefer pretends to admire the view. It’s not appalling, for a deserted island recently decimated by an ice giant. 

As holiday destinations go, Undvik has even less to recommend it than Ard Skellig. There’s the usual foreboding Skelligan landscape of frozen mountains, treacherous seas, and wind-swept forests, but no fur-lined rooms to afford a retreat from the cold. The slain offer scant hospitality.

At least the crossing is over. Yennefer had measured the distance from Kaer Trolde to Undvik in runs-- that is, the number of times Triss would run to the side of the ship to vomit. Pitiable woman couldn’t even take potions for her stomach, and the pitiable crew watched their futures bend toward an eternity of scrubbing stains from the deck.

The sailors can rest easy now, at any rate, with their own duties concluded. The labor now rests on the black-armored Nilfgaardians who swarm Undvik’s northern shore, the witchers coating their blades in drowner spleen or some other prize from their hoard of carcass parts, and the sorcresses of the Lodge… sorceresses who are presently using their priceless energy to scale a none-too-friendly seaside cliff. 

Alas, needs must. After all, once Avallac’h lures the Wild Hunt to Undvik and Eredin falls into their trap, the mages must have a magically efficacious spot at which to raise a shield and prevent his escape. Who better to assess the magical lay of the land than the mages themselves?

So far, the plan proceeds splendidly.

Margarita appears at last, shuffling slowly after Yennefer. She’s breathing like one of Geralt’s Roaches after a difficult ride. Her time as Radovid’s prisoner has left marks that have not faded. They must have lined the torture instruments with dimeritium. More weeks will pass before she heals. 

“Come, Rita. Admire the view with me.” Yennefer leans forward to peer over the edge of the path. “Mm, I do enjoy the sight of a precipitous plunge.”

Margarita heaves herself onto a rock ledge that promises the least comfortable possibility of seating. “Reminds you of Aretuza, doesn’t it?”

“Hm! So that’s why I keep hearing Tissaia’s voice tugging at my ear.”

“Did you ever want to visit us after you left?”

“No.”

Yennefer’s watching the sea, not Rita’s face, but Rita’s spasm of emotion ripples in the air. “I’ve never mistaken you for a nostalgic woman, Yenna. But… I’ve wondered when your desires might change.”

“I’ve never had much to offer the younger generations, Rita.”

“Untrue.”

“Oh? Have I become a positive influence in your memory?” 

“I’ve seen Cirilla.” 

Yennefer’s jaw snaps shut. 

“What a strong woman she’s become.” Rita’s voice is soft, approving, a teacher who sees her pupil reach her potential. “Independent. Capable. Powerful, too, like her mother.”

“Not like me. She’s no Lodge sorceress.”

“No.” The word is mellowed in Rita’s mouth. “Not like us. That may be your best gift to her. You never did accept Phil’s vision for the Lodge.”

“Surprisingly generous of Phil to let that lie. For now.”

“She’s other matters on her mind. We all have.” 

“Yes,” Yennefer admits. They’ve all many other matters to attend to. Phil's missing eyes and her efforts to magically simulate vision, for instance. Their impending battle with a spectral force from another plane of existence, for another. And then there is King Radovid’s burning of Aretuza, the school that had made them all. Whatever they’ve become since their education, they began there.

“I should have spoken earlier,” Yennefer says. “I’m... sorry.”

“What could you possibly apologize for?”

“Aretuza.” 

“Ah,” Rita sighs. 

Yennefer sighs, too. Her mind presents a mindless reply: _they deserved better_. Its uselessness scalds her. 

Deserve. Such an insidious notion, and just as puerile. There is no deserve; there is survival. The rest might as well be the crashing of the sea against these cliffs: such useless commotion in the face of a monolith.

Rita shakes her head, slow and sorrowful. An old woman’s movements in a body that hasn’t aged in decades. “I’ll have to mourn them properly when this is over. So many lost. Amina and Lina, my brightest pupils. Migethil with all of her mimicry pranks. Trinde who used butterflies to turn her pages. I knew these girls since they were young, when they couldn’t reach the nose of the gargoyle on the fourth floor.”

“Old Pan Twardowski.” Yennefer smiles. “I quite forgot him.”

The ocean surges below. If Yennefer closes her eyes, this spot might as well be the promontory at the tip of the island of Aretuza where the older girls used to sneak at night. The instructors must have known. It was a rare mercy, then, a privilege allowed to those who had earned the right to a little freedom.

That’s why Yennefer couldn’t go back. She surrenders her freedom to no one. 

“Yenna. I’ve watched you look after Ciri for all these years, alongside your witchers.” 

Yennefer’s shoulders tense into knots. “She took rather a lot of looking after.”

“If we succeed here, the Hunt will no longer pursue her. There will be no other Vilgefortz.”

“There will still be a Lodge.”

“Yes. And a young woman capable of holding her ground and negotiating with the Lodge as she pleases, on her own terms.”

Yennefer lets her smile show. “Yes.” 

“What will you do with yourself when Ciri is free?”

“Enjoy a long, restful sleep.” 

“Wonderful.” Rita’s eyes sparkle. “And after a month passes, and you grow bored of the pillows and sheets and the same four walls and you can’t bear to remain in bed for another moment?”

“You underestimate me.”

“Never.” Rita indulges this with a smile. “I mean only-- a time will come when all your battles are finished. And what will you do then?” 

Nothing, Yennefer thinks. I shall attempt a mundane, boring existence that I’ve not even the capacity to imagine, and what a luxury that shall be. No life and death struggles, no ambitions, no maneuvering in the courts of kings. Nothing to save or prove. I shall simply live.

Yennefer doesn’t answer in words. She forms an image in her mind and extends it beyond the limits of her skull for sorceress eyes to see: the daughter of a pig farmer, a young girl with a crooked back whose every breath feels thieved from worthier lungs. 

Rita sighs. She projects her own reply: Yennefer (is that what she looks like on the outside?) sprawled on an overstuffed chair, kicking an idle leg up and down as she gazes aimlessly out a window. 

“You’ve a suggestion?” Yennefer asks. 

“Call it an idea.”

“Yes, a more pleasing word. It sounds far less like an imposition.”

“Of course. That is one of my favorite pastimes, you know: watching when others attempt to impose their will on you. But I’ve no care to provide the entertainment.”

Yennefer tilts her head into the wind to hide her smile. Flattery is terribly addictive, but she permits herself the occasional indulgence. “And to think: some doubted your ability to run Aretuza. This idea of yours, let us entertain it.” 

Rita sets her shoulders. Even from this angle, with Yennefer standing and Rita seated, her fine jaw lifts at an aristocratic angle. She’s every inch a Laux-Antille. “I want to build an academy.”

“Splendid. Has Oxenfurt met its capacity for would-be poets?”

“A _magical_ academy, Yenna.”

“Ahhh. To replace Aretuza.” Yennefer lets her gaze drift to the horizon where the sky merges with the sea. “A refugee camp in the woods, where the adepts live in silence and rush to douse the torches at the rumor of witch hunters.”

“Don’t be cruel.”

Yennefer clenches her jaw to prevent the escape of any unfortunate replies. “Don’t confuse cruelty and realism. Aretuza was centuries old, a fortress on the sea, and still it fell to Redania. Where will you find a more defensible location? Kovir?” 

“No.” Rita’s voice does not turn to steel. It’s more like an old cedar, soft and solid. “Our brethren are safe in Kovir, all those who fled. It’s the others who concern me.”

The others are dead, Yennefer does not say. Considering that the alternative is Radovid’s attentions, it is a mercy.

“I mean those who are only discovering magic now,” Rita says softly. “Aretuza is gone. The need for Aretuza is not. Magic will come to other girls. They will try to use it and they will not know how. You know what happens to those girls, Yenna. When others sense a girl’s difference, her gift, but she cannot harness it.” 

“The world is cruel.” Yennefer shrugs, a substitute for the asinine aphorisms that might follow.

“Spoken like a cynic. Another word for a woman with a broken heart.”

Yennefer shakes her head. “Call it whatever you like. I call it tired.” The sound of her own voice surprises her. It’s as if her magic fails for a moment, and an old woman speaks through her. 

The soft reply: “I understand.”

The ocean froths below. 

“I need to do this, Yenna.”

“I know.” 

“You understand why?”

“You’re a rectoress. You’ve always taken that responsibility with utmost seriousness. No surprsie that you continue to do so, even with Aretuza gone.”

“I believe you understand more than that. Back in Kaer Trolde, I heard some locals talking. A tale of Freya’s Garden, and what destroyed the trees there.”

Yennefer’s fingers curl into her own arms. “What wild tales these Skelligers weave.”

“Wild, and also true.”

Yennefer does not reply. There’s no need. Aretuza taught them well; they both know what kind of magic can drain those sacred trees in moments, just as they know that the druids of Skellige would never permit the presence of necromancy on these shores. 

Yennefer’s throat itches with memory. How the stench of rot had thickened in her throat, foul enough to blind the mind and the senses. How her every breath turned to bile, every movement an ache as the living tissue of her body struggled against the magic of death. She’d trapped a boy’s spirit in his own corpse, forced him to gasp through a rotted throat--

And she would do it again. She would raise a thousand more corpses, desecrate every sacred tree, if it would keep Ciri safe. 

“You know,” Margarita says, “I used to envy you.”

Yennefer eyes the seafoam around a particularly violent spike of rock below. “You could have given yourself purple eyes, as well.”

“Oh, shush. I’m trying to be serious. I mean what you have with Ciri. That meeting with the Lodge, when she announced that she wanted to name herself Cirilla of Vengerberg, daughter of Yennefer.... The pride in her voice. The look in your eyes. I wondered what that must be like.”

“With that girl?” Yennefer gives a little scoff, as if she could feel something other than pride in her fledgling hellion. “Imagine domesticating an irritable badger.”

“Like calls to like, yes?”

Gods damn Margarita’s innocent face. It is so difficult to be annoyed with her when she winks like that. 

“She reminds me of one of my students.” Margarita drops her eyes to the sea. “Zepha. Gods, how I shuddered whenever an instructor stormed into my office with that name on their lips. She was always getting into something. Once, she turned the cook’s arms into goose wings. We ate nothing but plain bread for a week, as a lesson.” 

“Casual use of transmogrification? I’d say you had an apt pupil.”

“I certainly did. I should have seen it sooner. Can you imagine mastering transmogrification at age fifteen? During one of many scoldings, I told Zepha: magic is an act of will. Your spells demonstrate the shape of your soul. Is this the shape you mean to convey?”

“Hm.” The corner of Yennefer’s mouth curls upward despite herself. “You’re much more patient than Tissaia was.”

“For a reason. You two were so eager to engage in a contest of wills, at every opportunity. Who won?”

Yennefer’s lip curls again, softer this time. “Neither of us, but it was certainly amusing.”

“So it was for Zepha, at first. She never truly calmed-- but she learned to control herself when necessary. And then the witch hunters came. My students, my girls, we tried to evacuate them. Some refused. They wanted to fight. Nina told me that Zepha stood on the balcony, tearing stones out of the walls and levitating them above the hunters’ heads. When the dimeritium weakened her spell, the stones fell and smashed their skulls. She stood on that balcony dropping stone after stone. Nina told her to portal away. Zepha said no, she intended to show these hunters the shape of her soul. Nina didn’t understand when she told me.”

“Someone was paying more attention than you thought.”

Rita speaks so softly, it is almost a whisper. “They do, don’t they?”

The answer cracks Yennefer open. Yes, she thinks, they flail against us, don’t they? How they love to ignore us and shout us down in the conviction of youth. And all the while something of us leaks into them, becomes a pool hidden deep beneath them from which their roots feed… and one day, we see in them something of ours-- a story we once told, an old lesson we taught-- told from their mouths, and we realize it has watered their roots all this time. Unseen, in the dark, it has fed a sapling soul and helped it grow…

Rita sniffles. They both turn away. For many moments, only the sea and the breeze speak. 

“Tissaia was a fool,” Yennefer says at last, voice brittle after the long silence. “No one else could have led Aretuza. No finer sorceress.” 

“Thank you,” comes the grateful reply.

Strange to see it all before her: the long stretch of the past and the misty possibilities of the future. Once they find the Sunstone, they can set the trap for Eredin. If all goes to plan, the Wild Hunt will come. And what if, against all rationality, there is life _after_ the battle, after all their battles-- after all? 

“I’ll need a month of rest, at least,” Yennefer says. “Beyond that, I cannot begin to contemplate.”

Margarita gives a smile of unspoken understanding. “I look forward to seeing who you are when you’re not fighting, Yenna.” 

“Don’t accustom yourself to the idea.”

Margarita winks and turns her knowing smile to the sea. 

* * *

Kaer Trolde Mountain glitters white and cold. Ciri runs up its slope, her cheeks reddening against the wind. 

This is her now. Through the swamps of Velen, the streets of Novigrad-- ever since she came back to this plane she’s had to run, Eredin and his Wild Hunt always a few paces behind her. 

She has to remind herself: he’s not here. She’s not running from him this time. 

Ciri grits her teeth and heaves herself onto a snow-covered ledge, numb fingers scraping the rock. 

“‘Ey!” The voice that calls her from up ahead rings through a smile. “How ‘bout gettin’ those colt legs moving? I’ll have hair gray as yours when you reach the top!”

Ciri grins, fierce and toothed. “I’m merely giving you a head start. To preserve your confidence! Is it working yet?”

“Show you confidence when you catch up to me!” 

Ciri lunges up the path and nearly slips on a patch of ice. Gods, it’s ghastly cold here. The harbor’s a distant glimmer far below, the Skelligan village a sketched line. 

The face that grins at her from up the path, though… it’s a flare of hearth-warmth, a patch of spring. Auburn-haired and a mouth curled in the kind of cocky challenge that Ciri usually likes to smack off faces. On this face, though, it gives her a far different urge. 

Cerys flashes Ciri a wink before she runs on, disappearing up another of the mountain’s crags. 

And Ciri’s running once again but not from Eredin, Vilgefortz, Rience, Bonhart, Emhyr, or any of the men who have turned her life into one unending flight. She’s running toward Cerys and the fearless laugh that trails after her like the clothes that they leave on Cerys’ floor in a careless path from the door to the bed. 

Ciri knows they’ve reached the summit when the wind hits her. It’s savage, not a single obstacle to blunt its bite. She gasps despite herself. The air stings her lungs with frost. 

Cerys’s cheeks burn pink as salmon. She’s smiling the way Skelligans do when they win a contest, all wide stride and a smile just shy of arrogant. Not arrogant-- boastful. Ciri’s learning to tell the difference.

“Ye did better than I thought, skinny legs and all.” Cerys throws her head back the way horses do. Her hair blazes in the sunlight, bronze against mountain white. “Not as fast as yer old man, though! He was first up here when we raced.” She pats the lump of rock that must mark the summit.

Ciri wraps her arms around herself. “Yes, well, perhaps if I could feel my toes…”

There’s no hesitation. Cerys steps forward and wraps her arms around Ciri’s shoulders. A lovely gesture, even if it doesn’t do a damn for warmth against the wind.

“Poor little swallow,” Cerys croons. She’s worthy of a royal portrait right now, cheeks glistening, kohl-lined eyes sharp. Hard to believe the little girl that Ciri once knew has grown into this: the future queen of Skellige. 

She is lovely, though, Ciri thinks, helpless. So lovely that if the mountain could see her, it would feel shame for its bleakness and grow flowers to crown her. Fierce, bold Sparrowhawk who wants to fly with me. 

Something colder than the mountain wind coils in Ciri’s gut, and the memory comes of the other arms that held her years ago. Mistle, long dead. Ciri could tell Cerys about that girl. She holds the story in her throat like a shard of ice: Cerys, let me tell you about the first woman I loved. We ran and fled and killed together. It started as much more her choice than it was mine and the body does not forgive that easily, and months later I would see her lying by the fire and my hands still itched to strangle her. I hated her and loved her and sometimes I didn’t know how I felt at all, and then Bonhart decided for me. He took her head with a saw. He was hunting me, see. I had to love her after that. 

Now you’re here, and someone is hunting me. As always. Priscilla will be safe. We haven’t any intention of setting our paths side by side. But you. You want something more. Do you know what happens to people who are something more to me?

Ciri’s breath shudders, a throat full of ice. Cerys must mistake the shudder for a shiver and squeezes her tight.

Ciri leans her ear toward Cerys’ ear, touches the skin of her own numbed temple to that brilliant copper hair. 

“It’s cold up here,” Ciri says. 

Cerys rubs her hands up and down Ciri’s arms. “‘cause ye’re not used to it any longer. Spend more time here, Continental. Then ye’ll remember how to handle cold.” 

How to handle cold, indeed! Ciri laughs. Cerys joins in because she doesn’t know any better. 

She’s brave, this warrior-queen of the frozen isles. Stronger than Mistle was, luckier than Skjall and the rest of Lofoten, and better suited to the coming cold. 

Ciri reaches for Cerys’s arms and tucks her chin into her body’s warmth. Avallac’h would tell her to master her mind, else how can she expect to master her powers? Ciri would tell him to sod off. He’d reprimand her in that condescending voice of his, and then they’d arrive back at their usual state: the exasperated tutor, the defiant student, dread hanging over them both. 

“What’ll you do?”

The softness in Cerys’s voice pricks at Ciri’s attention. “When? When I get frostbite and my legs fall off?”

Cerys rocks her back and forth in her grip. “Oh, shut it, ye’re fine. Save your complainin’ for your mother, eh?”

“You must not know my mother.”

Cerys acknowledges this with narrowed eyes and a perfunctory smile. Yennefer’s built herself quite the reputation in Skellige already. “No, I mean… what’ll ye do after ye’ve beaten the Hunt?” 

“After?” 

The moment’s hard to imagine: Eredin dead, the Hunt defeated, the Aen Elle eliminated from her worries at long last. She tries to imagine it. Nothing comes to mind but void. 

“I never thought of it.” Ciri stops to press a kiss into Cery’s forearm. “Since I was a child, someone’s always been after me. Emperors. Bounty hunters. Sorceresses. The Hunt. I’ve been hiding and fighting since I was a little girl. I’ve never…”

When she doesn’t finish the sentence, Cerys squeezes her. “After this-- ye can. Ye will.” 

Far below, the wind gusts the snow into long trails of mist. Ciri watches its spread so she has something to look at other than Cerys.

When she returns her gaze, the sun halos red in Cerys’s hair. A new-day promise that Ciri can’t believe. 

For an irrational moment, Ciri sees herself breaking free of Cerys’s arms and hurling herself down the mountain. It’s the only logical escape. Or she could portal away and claim that her magic had suddenly taken hold of her. Magic, she could giggle-- you know how it is! 

Coward’s thoughts. They come sometimes, like tests. Ciri doesn’t quite know the question that this moment asks of her, but she knows the right answer: _yes._

If she could only trust it, this wild notion that she can have what she wants and no one will come for it with a saw. 

Ciri raises her chin. “Perhaps I’ll open a candy shop. Settle down to a lovely, peaceful life in a sleepy village.”

Cerys snorts. “Ye’d eat yer own toenails first.”

“That’s a pretty thought.”

A devilish glint shines in Cerys’s eyes. “If ye like that one, I’ve got loads more.” 

Ciri wraps her arms around the fur and wool of Cerys’s body. “To think I teleported all the way from Undvik for this.”

“Lookin’ for sympathy?” Has a wicked grin ever fit a woman’s face so well? “Ye’ll have to look harder than that.’

They giggle in the sunshine, on this glittering white peak. They’ll climb this mountain together another time, Ciri decides. After the Hunt is gone. 

Ciri dips her head and pecks half-numbed lips to Cerys’s forehead. Light, adorable. They share a grin and then a kiss that tastes like the beginning of frost, Cerys’s hand a press of warmth around her arm, then her shoulder, now the back of her head. Cerys still smells like the hearth-fire that Clan an Craite has lit for generations. 

Ciri closes her eyes and lets herself inhale Cerys, her scent of flame, her breath. 

Yes...? Yes? 

* * *

“Gah!”

“You’re good, you’re good. Lemme see it. See? Not a scratch.”

“No? What’s this, then?”

“That’s hair, Ciri.”

“I can very well see that you cut my hair. Unceremoniously, might I add. Ugh! You came _this close_!”

“Yeah. And didn’t cut you. Don’t trust me to pull my swings?”

“Aren’t you terribly confident.”

“What can I say. I had a good teacher.”

“Your flattery can go stuff itself. I’m still cross with you.”

“A’right. But you gotta admit, that was a good trick.”

“Hmph.”

“Been thinkin’ all this time that I gotta speed up, when really, I just gotta slow you down.”

“Yes, yes. Witcher Signs are so stupendously marvelous, aren’t they.”

“You mad that I finally won? Aww. Is Princess Cirilla upset?”

“I swear to every god on this Continent, if you say another word--”

“Okay, okay. Sorry. Truce?”

“Hmph.”

“You’re a good teacher, Ciri. All the time we spent here… just wanna let you know I appreciate it.” 

“Well. It feels nice not being the student for once.”

“Guess we get carried away trynta make sure you’re good. You deserve a lotta credit, kid. You’re better with a blade than I was at your age.”

“Really?”

“No doubt in my mind.”

“Hm. Thank you. I hope it will be enough.” 

“It will be. And we’ve got your back.”

“Uncle? Do you feel ready for the battle?”

“Think we’ve prepared as much as we can. Emperor’s here to help us out. The Lodge. It’s like prepping for your contracts. You get your potions in order, mind your blade, go over your plan-- and after that, nothing left but to do it. Forget everything else.”

“Like meditation. That’s why you meditate before battle.”

“You got it.”

“I’ve been thinking... I want to go on the Path after this. Once we’re done here.”

“Yeah? Your dad’s thinkin’ of retirement. You know that, right.”

“Of course. Someone should replace him on the Path, don’t you agree?” 

“Hm.”

“You don’t think I’d be good at it?”

“ Wanna know what I think… I think you’ll be the best of us.”

“Uncle…!”

“Hey, kid. Hey. We’re damned proud of you. All of us.”

“I know.”

“Eredin’s gonna be the first head on your trophy hook. Ain’t shabby for a new witcher. Know what my first trophy was?”

“No.”

“Bet you can guess.”

“...not a drowner?”

“Ey, got it in one!”

“Ha. I suppose you may have taught me a thing or two.”

“Good. Gotta earn my keep ‘round here. C’mon, now, let’s eat something. Big day tomorrow. Your first trophy.”

* * *

Geralt knows how to make Yen gasp. It’s a tongue swirl that does the trick, a light loop around her right nipple, the more sensitive one. Geralt traces one hand across the achingly soft stretch of Yen’s chest, glides his other thumb down the coarser plane of Eskel’s forearm as Eskel’s hand grips sure and firm around his cock. 

Eskel’s pupils have rounded, grown into eclipses against the yellow iris. The sight stirs Geralt to full waking, thickens him in Eskel’s palm and the calluses that mirror his. They’ve always balanced each other: Geralt’s silver to Eskel’s sable, Geralt restless, Eskel still. Geralt on Yen’s right nipple and Eskel on her left, Yen humming a long decadent moan between them. 

Eskel has had a few less years with Yen’s body, hasn’t figured out this technique yet. Geralt demonstrates. Deep, vigorous tongue strokes across the areola, like this. As the nipple firms between your lips, trace it slope to peak with the tip of your tongue, here. He meets Eskel’s eyes as he does it. Those rounded eclipse eyes. 

Eskel’s lips soften. Out comes the lapping wave of his tongue to tease a wet stroke up over the crest of her nipple, and Yen hisses her breath between her teeth. Her hand reaches up, almost grabs him by the hair at the back of his head, the way she used to-- before-- but she remembers, and Geralt remembers why the wave of her fingers breaks above Eskel’s shoulder and her fingernails slide back down again in the furrow of his spine. 

Eskel closes his eyes and shudders. 

“We should do this after.” Yennefer says it thickly, as if the words turn to cream in her mouth.

Geralt kisses her breast, the generous softness there. “After?”

“After the battle… if we survive. We should go far away from here.”

Eskel nuzzles the tip of his nose against her nipple. “Can think up a to-do list.” He grazes his teeth against her, a teasing scrape.

“Hmmm.” Her smile hums. 

Geralt goes still as Eskel traces circles on Yen’s chest with the tip of his nose. 

“Where?” Geralt asks. “Where would we go?”

“Wherever. As long as it’s far from here.” Yen’s eyes are closed. He knows the tautness in her jaw, the pinch of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Right now, she can’t bear to see them seeing her. She’s like this when she wants softness. “As far from politics and so-called high society as we can get.”

They hear the tone in her words. This isn’t dreamy pillow talk. Eskel stops, leaving his circle half-drawn on Yennefer’s chest in the first crescent of a question mark. “Finally got tired of it, huh? Kings, courts, conspiracies? ‘bout time.”

“Really, Yen?” Geralt rests his palm on the curve of Yen’s ribs below her breast. Her heartbeat thrums in the soft space where bone gives way to belly. A vulnerable spot on every animal. There’s the barest shudder under his fingers. “Hard to imagine you giving up politics. Even now, you’re up to your neck in it. What about that agreement with Emhyr, seeking amnesty for the Lodge?”

“Assuming I survive, I shall resolve it with him-- shortly before we depart. I imagine you’ll do the same with your own imperial contract?”

Eskel shakes his head. “You two can’t go for a piss without bumping into royalty. Gonna have to lock you inside for your own good.”

Yennefer’s eyes snap open. “Only one of us does the locking up around here.”

The grin on Eskel’s face is so wide, it takes visible effort for his lips to change shape and form the kiss that he presses to her chest. “Mm hm. The one best suited to the job.”

Yennefer curls her fingers into lazy claws and drags her nails along Eskel’s shoulder in teasing approval. “Such earthy wisdom, Eskel. You must teach Geralt your secret.”

“Been trying. For ‘bout ninety years.”

“Mm, yes, he’s not the quickest pupil.” Yen turns her languid violet smile to Geralt. “But we shall forgive you, darling.”

Geralt shakes his head. “Gotta gang up on me, don’t you.”

Eskel nuzzles against the plane of Yennefer’s chest, tilts his head to hold one ear above her heart. Geralt knows that spot. He loves it, too-- the warmth, the delicacy of skin papered over bone. Below the surface, encased in the body they love, the muscle of a heart opening and closing.

“Can’t blame me. I finally got backup,” Eskel whispers into Yennefer’s breast. “Nice to have someone else around with their head screwed on right.”

Yennefer’s lip lifts at the mention of screwing. She says the word’s vulgar, but it has certain predictable effects on her. Eskel’s pupils round out completely, become gleaming black mirrors. Geralt can see himself in them, and Yennefer, and the outlines of the room they’ve locked themselves inside so that no one can intrude. Avallac’h knows better than to disturb them. Ciri said she’d be with Cerys. Good. This is what the night before a battle should be: arms and close bodies and dreams of what it’ll be like, after.

“How about Zerrikania?” Geralt says.

Yennefer and Eskel look at him.

“You want to go far.” Geralt lifts one shoulder, an inch of shrug. “Heard they’ve got striped horses there. Big fat stripes like some fiends’ve got. Always wondered what they looked like. Maybe ride one.”

“Sure.” Eskel’s rounded eyes are big enough to fall into, swim inside. “Gives you a couple days to come up with a name.”

“Something wrong with Roach?”

“Everything,” Yennefer huffs.

They laugh and move together, Yennefer’s fingers on Geralt’s back now, light, drawing little sharp lines with her nails, Eskel’s hand pulling him somewhere radiant with every stroke. The bed a universe apart. 

Yeah. They’ll all survive the battle and then go away somewhere. Could find a place like the homes that Geralt has passed on the Path. Houses that show the layers of generations they’ve held: the foundation that a great-grandfather built, the new wall that a grandfather patched, the roof that a father replaced. There was never a younger generation in Kaer Morhen that Geralt could build a roof over. Only Ciri, for a moment that passed. 

This place will be different. They’ll find the build site first. Geralt will go with Eskel to the woods nearby-- there’s gotta be woods nearby-- and they’ll bicker over the best wood to use for the walls. They’ll compromise and make a plan to complete the roof and it’ll take longer than expected because their projects always do. The first rainfall, Yennefer will roll her eyes and magic a roof above them. It’ll hold until her ridiculous witchers learn to focus, she’ll snap, though she won’t be able to hide her smile. 

They’ll live quietly. Eskel will want a garden and a pen for animals. Yen will want room for her books and cosmetics. Geralt will wake up before them, slip under the reach of an arm, reassure a sleepy murmuring voice that everything is alright. He’ll go to the woodpile and work his cold fingers to build a fire in the hearth. Yen will wake up first, stumble to the fire he’s built and rub her hand over his shoulder while the other covers a yawn. Eskel will mumble that he needs a few more minutes, roll over, and sleep for another couple hours. 

He’ll build a roof over Yen and Eskel and keep an extra room clean for Ciri when she visits from Kaer Trolde. On cold mornings, he’ll make the fire. He’ll wake up every morning to the same thought: are they warm? are they safe? and he’ll look, and they will be.

“I could use a spell to sustain the fire, Geralt.” Yen’s eyes are closed. “Should you ever like a morning off.”

Reading him again. What a surprise. 

Eskel’s looking at him, the wordless look that’s seen through Geralt for eighty years. No need for mind reading. He knows.

Geralt glides his fingers down Eskel’s thick forearm, the ridges of scars and veins. A body he’s known for decades, seen harden, grow calloused with use. Eskel’s scent changed, too, losing the sharp tang of youth and mellowing to the earth and depth of an older man. 

They are both older men now. Nearly a century ago, as boys, they’d imagined growing old together. Funny how little time had meant to them once. Could they have imagined that they’d look like this? Yellow eyes, white hair? Skin tally-marked with cracks, a running count of years survived? Their bodies each an archive of scars? 

Eskel grips Geralt’s hand gently, guides Geralt’s fingers down the hard slope of his chest, through dark tufts of hair. Down to Eskel’s stomach. Geralt’s fingers draw back from the scars instinctively, but Eskel’s grasp is steady. So Geralt takes his cue and splays his fingers wide, takes in the unnaturally smooth skin of the scars that Caranthir left. 

Those drunks in the New Port were right. In the firelight the scars look like marks of an excruciating rite survived. Of strength gained the only way strength can be gained: through tearing open and the slow, painful work of reknitting.

Eskel’s pupils narrow. Geralt presses his hand into Eskel’s stomach, the body he’s known and read over decades. Tries to say with his touch and his eyes: I see you. I still see you. 

Yen’s breath seizes. When they look at her, she’s turned her face into the pillow. Her eyes are shut tight. 

“Yen,” they murmur at the same time, two breaths joined into one voice. They shift closer to her with quiet reassurances and gentle touch, one wrapped around each of her shoulders. The three of them gathered almost into one body. 

“And bagpipes, Eskel.” Yen’s whisper is brittle. “You mustn’t forget the bagpipes.”

“Hm?”

“You were thinking…” She grips his forearm. “You were thinking about hearth fires. You assumed correctly that Geralt was imagining our lives afterward. So you started thinking about the nights you’ll spend by the fire. I’ll be in bed. Geralt will yawn and claim to be absolutely awake. You’ll send him to bed before he falls unconscious on the floor and you’ll stay up keeping the fire lit to stave off the night chill… And you, Geralt… you imagined the mornings… you’ll rise at dawn and go to the woodpile...”

Eskel’s smile could light all the torches in Kaer Trolde. “We’ve been doing this a long time, Yen. In Kaer Morhen. Vesemir got too old to take care of the fire in the main hall. Lambert just bitches and hides in the blankets when he’s cold.”

“So we took care of it,” Geralt says. “Morning shift for me. Evenings for Eskel.”

Yen sniffs, rolls her head and looks at them. “One of you, read my mind.”

Geralt blinks. “Uh...”

“Go on.”

She uses the voice that neither of them can disobey, so they study her face. Breathe her scent in. Listen to her blood in her veins, the beating of her heart. Study the flickering amethyst of her eyes. 

“You--”

“You’re--”

Geralt smirks. Eskel tilts his eyebrow up.

“You first, Geralt,” Yen says. “Then Eskel.”

“You’re thinking about Ciri,” Geralt says. “How she’ll stop in during her contracts to ask our advice, then portal out again. She’ll probably drop off her trophies for safe-keeping. You’re worried that she’ll get forktail blood on the floorboards and we’re gonna line the hallways with taxidermy heads. ‘Cause we’re proud.”

“You’re thinking about your megascope,” Eskel says. “How it’ll light up when the Lodge calls. You’ll decide not to answer ‘cause you’re taking a bath. You’re figuring out who’s gonna bring you drinks, me or Geralt. You’ve decided you’ll alternate. Keepin’ things fair.”

Yen smiles. “You’re both partially right. And yet, you’ve both forgotten one crucial element. The bagpipes.”

Eskel chuckles. “I’ll do the piping. Geralt’s got no ear. Trust me.”

“Trust him,” Geralt adds.

Yennefer smiles but the corner of her lip trembles. “Implicitly,” she says, one hand sliding along Eskel’s forearm, the other tangling in Geralt’s hair, reining him toward a destination south. He happily complies.

Eskel shifts on his knees toward the pillows, Yen bends to lean her weight on one elbow. Geralt lowers his head until his nose brushes a sprig of dark hair. Smells her there, the deep scent that turns his mind wordless and wild. 

It could happen for the three of them. A sorceress who never joined the Lodge. Two witchers who’ve left the Path. 

Geralt uses his lips on her first. Teasing, unbearably soft. Yen arches, moaning through a mouthful of Eskel until the hum of her mouth sets off an answering rumble. 

Just like this. All the time. They’ll spend soft days in soft sheets, turning soft in turn. Muscle into flab, nerves reawakening in their calluses. Who will they be without the Path, the Hunt? Without any of what’s made them what they’ve always been? 

Yen’s voice stirs in his head. A promising sign. When it’s good, when he touches all the right spots in all the right ways, she sets off little erratic sparks-- candles flicker and spark purple, hairbrushes lift in the air. Geralt replies with his tongue, in criss crosses and circles. 

_Free._

The word shapes itself in the flood of her mind. It quivers out of her, shakes itself into his mouth where he laps it back into her. Her heels grind down into the mattress, lifting her hips to him. A gift that Geralt accepts enthusiastically.

 _Free_. Strange word. Alien but delicious in Geralt’s teeth and lips and purling tongue. 

“Free,” Eskel whispers, a puff of air, fragile as a dream. 

* * *

Dawn brings a weather breeder of a day to Undvik. The sky’s cheeky-blue, the shore glitters. Even the Nilfgaardians’ black armor gleams. 

Eskel stands with his back to the tent canvas while the elf Sage drones on. Nothing that concerns witchers. By the glaze of boredom in Yen’s eyes, it doesn’t concern her much, either. Every now and then, she flashes him a wink. He wrinkles his eyes, lets his lips lift. 

Avallac’h doesn’t notice. Neither do Fringilla, Triss, Rita, Philippa. He forgets about Ciri until she elbows him in the ribs. She’s got that look in her eye, same one she had when she was a kid throwing Lambert’s bombs into the forest-- to hunt rabbits, she’d said. At the time Eskel had pretended to believe her. There are some people who don’t feel right until they’ve set something on fire. That’s Ciri.

Eskel lowers his head into his best impression of Vesemir’s all-eyebrow glower. That used to cow her enough. Times’ve changed because she just rolls her eyes and goes back to glaring at Avallac’h’s head. He gives her a quick once-over for bombs, just in case.

The mages talk energy, positioning, ley lines, and a whole lot of something about the comparative merits of shields versus domes versus nets. They’ve decided on Alzur’s Sphere when Geralt finally shows up, sauntering in like it’s breakfast time at Kaer Morhen. Avallac’h does him the courtesy of going over the plan again and the sorceresses pretend they don’t mind the repetition.

It’s a simple plan. Same idea as killing a chort: lure it, trap it, kill it. The lure’s the Sunstone, some dusty artifact that Geralt helped Philippa dig up. Handy, these Skelligan caves-- always chock-full of magic fix-its when you need ‘em. This one sends a transdimensional message to the Aen Elle. The idea is that Eredin will hear it and show up with the Hunt to see who’s knocking. 

Won’t take long for Eredin to realize that the Sunstone’s a trap. That’s when Nilfgaard and the Lodge step in. The Nilgaardians will take the sea, using their fleet to block the Naglfar’s escape. Transdimensional or not, it’s still a ship. The Lodge will cast Alzur’s Sphere to block escape by teleportation.

Avallac’h glances at Eskel at the mention of teleporting. Strange. Or it’s strange until the muscles in Yen’s jaw tense, and then Eskel gets it. The Aen Elle navigator, the man responsible for steering the Naglfar to this world-- it’s Caranthir. 

Eskel forces breath into his lungs. They barely yield enough to expand. 

The usual nerve twinges its hallucinations of torches and walls. He can ignore it this time. His breath knows and something deeper than breath knows he is not a thing that can be taken. He is a stillness that Caranthir can never reach. 

Without anger or fear, only stillness, Eskel knows: today, he will kill this man. 

Eskel breathes. His muscles relax, become pliable. Ready. 

The Sunstone’s the lure. The Lodge and the Nilfgaardians are the trap. Geralt and Eskel-- they’re the kill. It’s another monster hunt. He knows how to do this better than he knows anything. 

“Sisters,” Philippa says, “let us scale the cliffs.” 

The sorceresses leave. Yen looks back at them over her shoulder. Her violet eyes don’t linger. What they need to say to one another, they’ve already said, have been saying one way or another since always. Ciri storms out after them. No place for her in the plan except to hang back and stay safe, but she’ll get over it.

They’re alone now. Avallac’h looks from Geralt to Eskel with those pale Aen Elle eyes. 

“Time is short,” the Sage says. “Have you made your preparations?”

Geralt moves in the corner of Eskel’s eye. Avallac’h’s eyes shift to Eskel. 

Eskel lets his breath move into his belly, that space of bottomless calm. “Call the bastards.”

The Aen Saevherne smiles. “With pleasure, Eskel. With pleasure.”

* * *

Ciri speaks the words of the spell into the Sunstone-- _I give you my heart_ \-- and then her own-- _but I will take your head._

In Avallac’h’s hand, the golden rock gleams with its own summery light. There’s a resonance in the air that only mages can hear, like the echoes of a voice calling a distant name. Expressionless, Avallac’h taps the tip of his staff until it flares with cold white light.

From the clifftop, Avallac’h’s staff resembles a small, furious star. Yennefer sees it from her place next to Fringilla and Philippa. She grips the obsidian star that hangs around her neck. It gives her a quick brush of comfort. 

Geralt and Eskel stand with Nilfgaard’s 7th Ymlats Infantry Regiment on the deck of the _Beacon_ , or so the name translates. The sea is calm, the skies a cloudless blue, but the decks clamor with footsteps that move quickly and hands that jitter in their gauntlets. To their witchers’ ears, the Nilfgaardian ship is a cacophony of preparation. They stand apart from the Nilfgaardians at the ship’s railing, side by side with their shoulders just barely touching. 

They’re waiting. Everyone’s waiting.

When the portal finally opens, it’s a relief. 

It starts with an explosion of light in the sea mist. A supernova suspended in the sky and a dark void at its center. There’s a sound like a single boom of far-off thunder, then a rushing sound and a breeze that shouldn’t feel out of the ordinary, but something in its smell or texture feels foreign, invasive. 

The wound in space splits wider. Something’s coming through. It’s massive, pointed like a mountain peak hovering sideways. Or the hull of an otherworldly ship.

The Naglfar tears its way into this world. Its shadow covers the north shore of Undvik, where day turns to twilight. 

Yennefer grimaces. No one sees it. She and the other sorceresses raise their arms and begin the incantation of Alzur’s Sphere. The sails of the Nilfgaardian ships disappear into the thick fog that has suddenly gathered, heavy and opaque, over the water. A Wild Hunt spell. 

On the deck of the _Beacon_ , Geralt’s breaths come in icy puffs. The Nilfgaardians murmur as fog erases the sky and the water below, all sight dimmed to gray. 

Eskel glances down at the deck of the ship. The planks are speckled white. Snow has begun to fall. 

* * *

Geralt starts. Eskel’s grabbed his wrist.

“Ice,” Eskel spits through clenched teeth. 

Eskel braces himself against the railing. For the space of a drowner blink, Geralt’s confused. Then a Nilgaardian shouts an incomprehensible syllable from the prow and understanding comes in a flash.

 _Ice._ He lets Eskel yank him toward the railing and gets a secure grip just in time.

The _Beacon_ seizes. 

They’re thrown forward, boots scrabbling for purchase on the planks. There’s a sickening crack of wood. A fallen Nilfgaardian clatters along the deck and smashes into the cabin in a crash of armor. Geralt’s arm doesn’t rip out of its socket, though it makes a good effort.

The ship grinds to a halt. One glance at the water tells Geralt why: the sea’s turned to a forest of jagged icicles. Huge spikes of ice jut out of the fog like strigga teeth. 

“Run aground,” Geralt says.

Eskel only grunts. He never wastes energy on the obvious, especially when there’s a job to do. It makes Geralt want to kiss him, try to bring a smile to the serious, warped line of that mouth.

Something to look foward to, if they survive.

The ship’s surprisingly intact, for a pile of wood driven hard into icicles the size of tower turrets. Some shipwright ought to be proud. 

The Nilfgaardians are still clambering upright when Eskel jumps over the side of the ship. Geralt hears his boots land on ice so thick, there’s no sound of a brittle crack or a hollow thud. The lake at Kaer Morhen used to freeze that solid. Here in Undvik, the ocean’s gone solid down to the sand-- and the Wild Hunt’s only been here a few minutes. 

Geralt leans over the side. One of the Nilfgaardians joins him, a mass of black metal out the corner of his eye. They stare down at Eskel, who’s standing on a cloudy white plane of ice and staring into the fog. 

“Naglfar’s gotta be that way.” Eskel’s voice is flat, eyes focused to slits. A hunter on the scent.

Geralt meets the Nilfgaardian’s eyes. The man’s got the look of a spooked horse, the whites wide. “Follow us. You take care of the hounds and the ordinary soldiers. Leave Eredin to us.”

The Nilfgaardian swallows. “Hounds?” 

“Yeah. Big dogs covered in ice. The Hunt travels with ‘em.” Geralt pauses. “If you see ice cracking up beneath them-- back off.” 

The Nilfgaardian’s eyes bulge. Geralt jumps over the side before he can say anything else. 

Eskel doesn’t look back at any of them. He stares straight ahead as the Nilfgaardians jump clumsily down from the ship. Must be counting the sounds of bootfalls because when the last soldier joins them, Eskel starts forward without a word. His heartbeat sounds strong, steady.

“Eskel,” Geralt murmurs, meaning more.

Eskel doesn’t look behind him. “Wolf,” he says, one syllable that says everything. 

Eskel moves a pace ahead of them in slow rolling strides, elbows wide, shoulders poised. Movement deliberate and contained. Several steps behind him, the Nilfgaardians clank along the ice. The wind howls white and icy. No sound of the Naglfar or the Hunt.

Geralt squints as they stalk across the ice. Nothing visible in this fog, not even the sails of their own ships. Only the swirls of snow. On Eskel’s shoulders, the spikes of his armor are already coated white.

Was like this when the Hunt came to Kaer Morhen. The air turned icy, the stone walls turned gray with frost…

Then there’s light ahead. Bright, glaring, it blinks in the fog about thirty feet off the ground. Geralt shields his eyes with his hand. 

Soundless, Eskel leaps forward. But something feels wrong. That light, it’s gotta be--

The air blisters so frigid, it burns. 

“Eskel,” Geralt shouts, “wai-”

There’s a roar, a monstrous crack like a glacier splitting in two, and the air howls in a sudden blast of snow. In the blizzard, Geralt has half a moment to see the cold encase Eskel mid-step before his vision turns to ice. 

* * *

Ciri holds her breath. In her experience battles are loud, chaotic. By now she should be hearing battle cries, sword strokes, the anguished screams of men who have lost arms, legs, guts, and whatnot. 

From where she and Avallac’h stand on the dock, though, there are few sounds. Only the lapping of low tide against the mossy rocks and the creak of the Nilfgaardian ships in the water, and dimly, further off, the whistle of snow-laden wind. 

“Silence.” She cocks her ear toward the bank of fog. “It’s completely still.” 

“It’s a trap,” Avallac’h says, urgent, decisive. “We must flee. Now.”

Flee. The thought sparks fire in her, and the fire hardens to a length of steel. “Not this time.” 

“No, Zirael. You are not ready. You do not control your powers.”

The Aen Saevherne says it so casually, with such certainty. Rightly so-- is it not true? Two days ago, didn’t she fail to direct the lightning bolt that he threw at her? That stone cairn that he told her to take apart stone by stone, didn’t she hurl them all down in frustration? The sea spray that she didn’t contain, the--

\--the witchers she loves who sailed into that fog with no powers over time and space, only their signs and the swords on their back. What of them? And of Yennefer and the sorceresses who have risked their lives to come out of hiding and ensnare the Naglfar with their combined magic, and Skjall who died for her, and Vesemir who died for her, and all the defenders of Kaer Morhen who raised their blades against the Wild Hunt-- for her.

No. She’ll never run again. 

Ciri lifts her chin. “I’ll manage.”

“Ciri.”

“Get out of my way.”

_“Ciri!”_

That whiplash in his voice, it might as well be a shackle of dimeritium around her leg. Ciri can’t help it. She stops and turns toward him, hating her hesitation and hating him. 

Avallac’h’s cold eyes look at her. They look away.

“The ice,” he says to the fog. “It’s a spell.”

“Caranthir’s?”

“Caranthir’s.”

The steel inside her sharpens to an edge so fine, it could slice wind. 

“He cast it with his staff,” Avallac’h says without looking at her. “You must find him, destroy it.”

The words are permission. Ciri lets herself savor it.

“I’ll not stop with his staff.” 

She pulls the air into her, lets it fill the spaces between her particles and dissolve her. When she coalesces again, she stands in a maze of splintered ice. A tall, dark figure turns, sees her, and growls a warning. Two other silhouettes in the fog turn toward her, too. They wear helmets in the shape of skulls. Warriors of the Wild Hunt. 

Ciri pulls her blade free from its sheath. It gleams white in the storm wind.

Then, she moves--

\--behind one warrior, slashing a brilliant red line into and through his torso, her blade moving faster than the blood in his veins before she teleports--

\--in front of another, already slashing, already vanished before his severed leg swings free of his body--

\--and reappears beside another, her sword sliding beneath his armpit. 

Ciri materializes on the other side of them, has already left them behind before they’ve gathered the wit to scream. 

She runs across the ice. Enemies appear in the fog-- hounds, soldiers. She leaves them in pieces. They’re distractions. 

Ciri follows the glaring white light in the distant fog. Two more soldiers fall to a blade that moves so fast they never see it, and then she sees him. A solitary figure standing on the ice, dark-armored, his helmet crowned by a circle like a compass. 

Caranthir, mage and navigator of the Wild Hunt. 

The steel inside her bristles.

Caranthir turns and sees her. The long iron staff in his hand lowers but the glowing sphere at its tip still swirls. It ripples with waves of white and silver. This must be the source of the spell. 

“Zirael.”

Ciri curls her lip. “Whoreson.” 

She hurls herself at him, sword raised. Caranthir is fast, far faster than his bulk and his armor should allow. That terrible staff pulls back. His swing is precisely timed, positioned to shatter her ribs as she leaps toward him. 

The staff whirls through nothing. She is not there. 

She’s behind him. Her blade arcs with a witcher’s deadly precision.

He sees her. He glows in blue mist and disappears.

Behind you, Ciri had told Eskel a hundred times in their training, always behind you. So she pivots her weight as Vesemir and Eskel and Lambert and Geralt taught her in the courtyard of Kaer Morhen and carries the swing around in a vicious arc that catches Caranthir with his staff raised, cuts him bloody through the gaps of his armor. His blood sprays across the ice.

The splatter of it. She sees Eskel again, Eskel as she and Yennefer had found him in the dungeons of Tir Na Lia-- shirtless, shackled, bloodied, the red and blue scars spattered across his stomach and chest where he couldn’t cover them. 

Ciri snarls. The warmth of it smokes in the icy air, dragon’s breath. 

She’ll kill him. Eskel was wrong; Caranthir’s will be the first head on her trophy hook. A beast deserves no better. 

Ciri lunges. Caranthir dissipates. He still has the strength to use his magic. He’s behind her, of course. She dematerializes and reforms above his head, blade swinging down into nothing when he teleports again.

He may be a mage, the most powerful that the Aen Elle can produce, but Ciri is the Lady of Space and Time. She unwinds herself into the air and she is the mist that covers the frozen sea, everywhere at once. She sees the frozen Nilfgaardians and Geralt and Eskel petrified mid-stride and the sea of severed body parts she’s left in her wake and the hounds of the Hunt that follow her bloody trail and Caranthir, stumbling from his last teleportation because he is not her, he can move through space but he cannot command it as she can, and she coalesces behind him first as a specter of vengeance and then its embodiment, a whirl of steel that slashes him across the chest and hurls him backward onto the ice. He loses his grip on the staff. Its heavy length skates across the ice. 

Caranthir’s winded, bleeding, wheezing. He rolls onto his knees and scrambles toward the staff.

Ciri flies toward him. 

He’s grabbed the staff. It’s swinging toward her. She sees its length its cruel iron weight but most of all she sees that glaring orb of silver and white and she hears herself scream as she smashes her sword down upon it. 

The orb explodes. 

Ciri’s hurled backward. She’s bashed her face against the ice at least three times before she slides to a stop. Her back hurts, head hurts, shoulders hurt, everything hurts. The ice aches hard and frigid against the back of herhead. 

Someone heavy limps closer. A helmet with a circular crest like a compass bends over her. 

“Almost, Zirael,” a deep voice pants. “Almost.” Caranthir reaches for her. 

Ciri calls the air to her. It obeys, and for a moment that not even a hummingbird can see, she pictures the space behind Caranthir. There’s a narrow slit between the back of his helmet and his shoulder armor. Her blade would fit just right. 

She could kill this man. But now she remembers what Eskel said months ago, in the dimly lit kitchen of Kaer Morhen. He told her to take Geralt to kill Imlerith. _Let him settle what there is to settle._

It had been the right choice. Caranthir-- he isn’t her kill. 

The air envelops Ciri and she dissolves. 

When she reforms, she’s lying on a beach. After the ice, the sand feels warm against her back.

Ciri lifts her head. The earth tilts but her head is still clear enough to make out the fog clearing over the water, the blizzard clouds giving way to bright blue sky. 

She lets her head fall back into the sand. When she hears footsteps approaching, she doesn’t even bother to lift her head. 

“Zirael!” Avallach’s shadow falls over her. “Are you alright?”

Ciri runs her tongue over her lips, tasting sweat and a hint of blood. Is it hers? “Yes. I’m alright.”

“That was a rash waste of energy.” There’s relief in his voice.

“You’re wrong.” 

He shakes his head and doesn’t bother to answer. Likely thinking about the foolishness of humans. 

Ciri sits upright. Icebergs still float on the seas, but she can see the Nilfgaardian ships clearly now-- and the ragged silhouette of the Naglfar, too. 

Behind her, Avallac’h clears his throat. Gods. He’ll try to be delicate now. “What you had decided before… about the tower...”

“Yes,” she cuts in. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

“You’re certain you’re equal to the task in your present state?”

“It must be done. Do you see anyoone else lining up to volunteer?”

He doesn’t have an answer to that.

After a moment, he sighs. Put-upon, long-suffering Avallac’h. “If you remain committed to this course, time is of the essence.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.”

Ciri still takes her time rising to her feet. There are figures moving on the ice out there. She can see them if she squints: Warriors of the Wild Hunt and Nilfgaardians. No sign of Eskel’s black and red armor or Geralt’s shock of white hair. Nor is she close enough to the cliffs to catch a glimpse of Yennefer.

Pity. She would have liked to see them, one last time. 

“Good luck,” she whispers. “Settle what there is to settle.”

Ciri moves again, this time at a slow walk, away from the battle and up the narrow cliffs toward the ruin of a forgotten elven tower. Avallac’h’s slow steps follow after her. 

* * *

Frozen to death. Well, Eskel figures it could be worse. 

They used to argue about it around the table at Kaer Morhen-- the best and worst ways to die on the Path. Geralt’s always said the worst has got to be death by zeugl. Eskel’s pick is death by mage. Some mages kill the way royal chefs make food: too complicated. 

Eskel tries to move again. Even his fingers are locked in place by ice. He’s starting to lose feeling in his hands. 

Guess this counts as death by mage. It ain’t so bad after all, as witcher deaths go. At least he’ll make a pretty statue. 

Eskel tries to laugh. Someone oughta. The ice around his neck and mouth doesn’t even crack. Not even Igni melts the ice around his palm. 

He’s about to try again anyway when his chest hums. No-- there’s something vibrating against his chest. It’s his medallion.

Eskel tries to blink frozen eyelids. Hard to tell, but he could swear there’s more light outside the ice. Might mean that the fog’s cleared. Which would mean…

He can’t feel his hands, which he hasn’t made an Igni this sloppy since Bastion days. The warmth hits him first, so sudden and stark against his frozen hand that it feels like he’s dunked his whole hand in candle wax. Then there’s a new sensation in his nearly-petrified fingers: the touch of air. 

It’s working. 

A few more blasts of Igni help thin the ice. Finally Eskel flexes his shoulders and the ice sheet shatters to pieces. He sucks in air. Breathing’s never felt this good. Above, the sky’s a carefree shade of blue. 

Dunno how it happened, but it’s happened. The spell’s broken. 

There’s a terrific cracking, and then Geralt’s free too. Eskel pounds him on the back. No idea if that helps but it’s a good excuse to touch him, feel his warm-blooded body still breathing and intact. 

“You good, Wolf?” 

Geralt raises his eyebrows. They grin at each other like two bastards who have no right to be alive. “Sure. Got a nice ice bath. Now I’m finally awake.”

“Then we better find Caranthir.” Eskel says it lightly but the feel of the mage’s name in his mouth brings a curl to his lip. “Give ‘im a proper thank you.”

Geralt’s face barely changes, but Eskel knows every wrinkle and twitch. “Right behind you.” 

They leave the Nilfgaardians trapped in the ice. Igni’s no good there unless they wanna torch the poor bastards. 

But truth is, Eskel can’t think about them. Everything in his mind bends toward Caranthir.

They walk on. When they spot a lone dark figure ahead, he knows before he sees the armor that’s shaped like a skeleton’s bleached ribs, the black fur collar, the helmet with its upright halo. And that staff, long, iron, the same that he remembers except for the empty space at its tip that once held a glowing orb. 

Caranthir.

The helmet turns toward him, and time splits. Eskel is standing on the frozen ocean just off Undvik and he’s also in the courtyard of Kaer Morhen. Caranthir leans heavily on his damaged staff, one blood-spattered arm cradling his midriff. Caranthir circles the stone courtyard, helmet tilted at an intent angle that Eskel doesn’t know how to interpret until it’s too late. 

Across time and space, Eskel pulls his blade free and hefts it in his hand. A tool as familiar as his body. His unowned, survivor’s body. Got the beserker marks to prove it.

“Ahh. Witcher.” 

Eskel knows that voice, has heard it echo after him. It’s pained now, but dripping with mockery. 

Torches. Walls. They flash and flicker like candle light but Eskel brushes them aside. The wounded, panting animal here-- he’s no all-powerful force out of a nightmare. The man can’t even stand up without leaning on a gutted staff. 

Snow crunches behind him. Geralt, taking a step closer to Eskel. Letting his presence say what’s needed. 

Eskel gives his usual answer when the time for talking’s done. He grunts. 

Caranthir’s breath thickens. Might be a laugh or a strained wheeze. “You’ve come. So eager for more?” 

Geralt’s heart pounds harder. Eskel ignores it, ignores Caranthir. Focus. 

“Let us see...” Caranthir moves with effort. “...if you remember how to beg.”

Eskel replies with Aard. Caranthir stumbles backwards. He’s bulky, slow, even slower wounded. Eskel presses the advantage with a lunge, blade first. He hits nothing but ice. Caranthir’s gone.

Ciri’s voice in his head: _behind you, Uncle, always behind you--_

Eskel drops and rolls on the ice. Caranthir’s staff slams down into the space he leaves behind. Bits of ice shards fly into the sunlight. Geralt springs into an arcing pirouette, pure Wolf school style. Caranthir vanishes again. 

Fuck’s sake. 

Instinctively Geralt and Eskel close ranks, standing back to back. Eskel sees a trace of blue mist gathering and vaults toward it. Caranthir materializes and raises a gauntleted fist. Orbs of silver light wink above him. 

“Geralt.” Eskel reaches out with one arm blindly, finds Geralt there, and calls up Quen. Whatever bits of magic that Caranthir’s called up, they smash harmlessly against the golden shield. 

Caranthir drops his hand, the spell spent. This is their chance. Eskel launches himself forward at a sprint and wills himself to get there, come on, sword, do your damned job, find that soft space of an exposed throat and cut, and there’s no rage in him, no terror. His core calm. 

Caranthir readies his staff. With an animal's instinct Eskel knows he’s gonna teleport again and he knows what to do. 

Eskel readies Yrden and hurls it to the ground. Just like practice with Ciri. The ice lights up in a circle of glowing purple runes and Geralt lunging from the left slows to a crawl. Caranthir stands still. 

Eskel charges. 

_\--beg me not to--_

There’s a sound of metal cutting through flesh, a hot smell of iron. Yrden slows Caranthir down so he doesn’t even have time to stumble. Eskel’s pivoting, shifting weight, already reversing his slash. 

_\--I own you--_

Caranthir’s body opens again.

_\--and there’s nothing you can do about it--_

Eskel changes his grip, fluid, barely a second’s pause. With his free hand he grabs Caranthir’s shoulder, holds it in place, shoves the length of his sword through the crunch of bone and into flesh.

Caranthir ruptures. Blood spatters hot and grotesque on the ice. 

Eskel twists. His witcher hearing picks up the rip of every shredding muscle fiber, the split of lung sac and the crunch of rib grinding against sword metal. He’s inside Caranthir. He’s splitting Caranthir open and--

\--and it is ugly work, tactile, impersonal. Witcher’s work. A life needs to be taken, a monster has to die. 

Caranthir’s on his knees. Like Eskel was. They’re mirrored in time. There’s a dance of torchlight on walls and a movement of shadow on the white-white ice. Then and now, a body has overpowered another body. It’s simple. Animal.

The ice trembles. Eskel looks down. There’s his own shadow on the ice, and the shadow of his sword plunged into Caranthir’s chest, and the shadows of ice shards that he shouldn’t be able to see because they should be lying flat against the ground--

He’s gonna teleport. Eskel tries to pull his sword out. Caranthir’s grabbed his leg. 

Then Geralt yells, no words in it, a mindless roar as he plunges his blade into Caranthir’s side. The mage falters. Magic dies in his free hand. There’s a clatter of ice shards tinkling down and Caranthir sags. Eskel’s still gripping the sword hilt as the body sinks. He yanks the blade free and Caranthir droops and flattens.

They’re all still. Geralt and Eskel standing, watching, Caranthir splayed out on the ice.

Eskel listens. 

Distant sounds of fighting. Wind whistling. Heartbeats. There’s Geralt’s, elevated for a witcher but quieting. Louder, faster, there’s Caranthir’s. His body knows it’s dying. His heart’s trying to pump whatever blood is left, beating harder, faster. A living thing’s final panic. 

Eskel sits down on the ice. It’s cold on his ass, but whattaya gonna do. 

“Come on, you bastard.” he mutters. “Hurry up and die.”

Geralt sits next to him, saying nothing.

The dying man’s heartbeat rises to a maddened hammer. Tachycardia, the thicker books in Kaer Morhen called it. Usually music to a witcher’s sensitive ears. The body’s swan song. It means that the hunt’s finished, the fight’s done. Someone else lost. 

With every heartbeat, Caranthir seems to shrink. He’s nothing but a man, a man in a dying body with the same dumb animal instincts as everybody else.

The heartbeat stops. 

In the corner of his eye, Geralt’s head tilts. He hears it, too. 

They wait. Caranthir’s heart doesn’t beat again. 

Eskel breathes out, out, out. He didn’t know how much he was holding. 

“You good?” Geralt asks.

“Good enough,” Eskel says. 

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Nah. Not yet.” 

“Alright.”

No idea how he’d put words to this. Eskel’s looking at the rivulets of red in the ice, at Caranthir’s extinguished body, and he’s back in that dungeon cell. The dimeritium shackles fall from his wrists. The gag comes out. He can speak. He rises from his knees, stands, feels himself grounded and solid. _No,_ he says, and the word’s become a spell of undoing that disintegrates the torches and walls. Burns them away and scatters the ashes until only this moment is left: Eskel and Geralt sitting on the ice, Caranthir a corpse with no power over him. 

Eskel stands. “C’mon. We’re done.”

Geralt stands, too. “By the way-- sorry. Meant to save the last cut for you.”

“He’s dead. All that matters.”

Eskel’s surprised by how true that is. 

Geralt hums. “Too bad he can’t die twice.”

Eskel grins. “Know any necromancers?”

“There’s Yen.”

The grin drops. “Wait. What?”

“Uh.” Geralt coughs and looks away. 

Eskel shakes his head. Just when he thinks he’s finally caught up... “Time we took care of Eredin,” he says. “Afterward, I’ve got questions.”

Geralt flicks eyes at him. He gets that schoolboy look whenever he’s worried about Yen’s temper. Yen spooks him more than the instructions at Kaer Morhen ever did. “Mind if we wait ‘til the Lodge leaves? They’ll have, uh… strong opinions.” 

“Wolf. When we get to Zerrikania, or wherever the hell we’re goin’ when this is done-- you two gotta stay away from kings, sorceresses, and forbidden magic for three days. Three days, that’s all I ask. Think you can manage?”

“No promises.”

Eskel shoves him with his shoulder. 

They make their way toward the Naglfar, leaving a body to cool on the ice behind them. 

* * *

Yennefer feels the air freeze, gather, and shrink. A moment later, the spell that hangs over the sea shatters. Chaos convulses and she rocks backwards against the blast.

The convulsion passes. When Yennefer lowers her arm, blue skies have returned. The false blizzard has cleared. Now, far below the cliffs, she can make out the sails of Nilfgaardian ships. Dwarfing it is the massive hulk of the Naglfar like some half-rotted leviathan. The Aen Elle have even gone to the trouble of carving the hull into the likeness of bone. 

She’s not opposed to decorating with animal remains. A bit of bone can add just the right touch to a black velvet dress. But there is a difference between striking and embarrassingly melodramatic.

Philippa hums. “That must have been Cirilla,” she says, edged with disapproval. 

“Yes. My daughter’s remarkably effective--” _when allowed to pursue her own aims without interference._ The telepathic addition isn’t strictly necessary, but that feel of the air curdling around Philippa’s indignation-- ah, how could Yennefer deny herself the pleasure? 

“What is she doing down there?” Fringilla asks. “Wasn’t she meant to stay with your elf? Who, while we’re on the subject, seems an odd leader for this enterprise.”

“The enemy of our enemy,” Yennefer says. “The spell must have been--” Her throat catches. She swallows down the itch in her throat. “--Caranthir’s. It would seem she has bested him.”

“Perhaps,” Philippa mutters. “Or perhaps he has diverted his energy to taking her captive. And what then?”

Yennefer is no prophet. She can see only what her eyes tell her or what a megascope or projection might reveal. Yet squinting down into the jumble of ships and ice floes below, she feels a certainty collect inside her: Caranthir is dead. 

Illogical? Yes. Without evidence? Absolutely. Yet the conviction is so strong, she smiles. She doesn’t need to see it to know that it is a hideous smile.

“If he has her,” Yennefer says, “then I must go to her.”

“What? Yenna.” Philippa takes a step toward her. That magical eyesight of hers is really quite the marvel. No doubt Phil will provide them all with a long, condescending explanation afterward. “We must maintain the sphere. If the navigator has her, all he requires now is a means of escape. Do you mean to dismantle the sphere and hand him his opportunity?”

“No. I mean to hand him his head.” 

“Yenna, Phil’s right. Let’s not abandon our posts prematurely. If the Naglfar gets away-- what in Melitele’s name! Who are _they_?”

Yennefer follows Fringilla’s disbelieving stare and Philippa’s deep frown. To the north stands the ruin of an eleven tower atop a tall cliff. Emerging now from behind that cliff is a fleet of Skelligan warships that fly the red and black banners of Clan an Craite. 

“My, my. Emhyr may have set his Skelligan campaign aside to assist us, but it seems that he failed to inform the Skelligers.” 

“What!” Philippa explodes. “Ignorant wretches! Why must they interrupt us with their petty territorial squabbles now?”

Oh, but there is something cosmically absurd about this. Yennefer finds herself smiling as the Skelligan warships crash into the ice floes and spill their hordes of roaring warriors onto the ice. They charge the black and gold forces of the Nilfgaardians and the black icicle-sharp ranks of the Wild Hunt alike.

“So much for Emhyr’s pardon,” Fringilla mutters gloomily.

“Nonsense,” Yennefer says. “We’ve no control over the Skelligers. They hardly control themselves. With proper communication, I’ve no doubt Emhyr will recognize this. But enough. I’m going down there.”

“You can’t be serious. Look at that mess. It’s sheer chaos!”

“Yenna. Don’t--”

Before Fringilla can finish, Yennefer steps through the portal--

\--into blistering cold, screams, and the clash of weapons. 

Yennefer squints; her eyes ache in the wind’s cold bluster. The unnatural ice surrounds her in a plain that’s littered with clumps of glittering icicles, sharp and deadly, and bodies: Skelligan, Nilfgaardian, Aen Elle. The sea is frozen into daggers and swarming with roaring, bloodied men in every direction. 

They are irrelevant. Yennefer sets her sights on the one object that matters: the enormous cadaver of the Naglfar. 

She couldn’t have told Philippa and Fringilla why she portaled herself here. To look for her witchers, Yennefer could have said. To make sure that Caranthir is dead, and Ciri safe, and Geralt and Eskel free to hunt down Eredin without impediment. 

If the sorceresses had looked into her thoughts and divined the true reason, they might’ve called her selfish. Or mad. The usual accusations that Yennefer has come to enjoy. 

Footsteps crash toward her. Not looking back, she calls a sphere around her. To her would-be attackers, it would resemble a circle of seething purple flame, smokeless and heatless. That is, until it comes in contact with a living thing. 

The footsteps get louder, louder until they nearly close in on her. The back of her neck prickles, expecting impact. 

Instead, there’s a chorus of screams, a gibberish of words from another plane, and a sizzling hiss. Something falls to the ice with the wet weight of meat. 

Yennefer moves on. 

The Skelligers ignore her, as do the Nilfgaardians. They occupy the attention of the Wild Hunt so that Yennefer has to incinerate hardly anyone else before she reaches her destination and boards the deck of the Naglfar. 

The deck looks surprisingly ordinary, given the ostentatious decoration of the hull. No more skull carvings and theatrical bone stylings, only the usual arrangement of wooden planks, deck, captain’s quarters, masts. All is swathed in smoke from the many fires that the Skelligers have now set in the Nilfgaardian fleet. The deck’s lined with the bodies of fallen Skelligers.

Yennefer slows her steps. She spares only a cursory glance for the slain. Valiant fools, all, charging the figure who towers here, black-armored, his helm forged into spiked horns in crude imitation of a crown. 

“Eredin.”

For here he stands: the King of the Wild Hunt.

Eredin turns toward her. His helm reveals nothing of his face, not even his eyes, lost as they are in dark pits fashioned like the sockets of a skull. “Sorceress.” 

This is why she’s come. To hear the same voice that spoke while the apple trees burned in Avalon, where she and Geralt had been happy. To face the man who has chased their daughter across worlds. 

The men who take and take and take. They will not take from her again.

Yennefer tsks. “Not even the courtesy to use my name. Do you not recall it?”

Eredin lifts his sword. He is massively tall-- Yennefer would come to his chest if they stood close together. His sword blade is almost as long as she is tall. “You can remind me as you expire.”

The air cramps. Before he can teleport, Yennefer closes her fist. A series of cracking sounds fill the air in quick succession, wet and hideous. Eredin howls. His sword falls to the deck, dropped from a hand in which each delicate bone has splintered. 

Mutilated. Exactly as her hands looked when Vilgefortz was done with her. 

The planks thud under Yennefer’s boots. Eredin stumbles away from her. “Eredin. You’re not even trying.” Her voice is a dissecting blade. “An island of apple trees. Do you remember that? In Avalon?”

His left hand reaches down for something. A knife, a sword, it doesn’t matter. With another flick of her wrist, that hand, too, fractures. He roars and stumbles again. 

Yennefer does not hurry her approach. “That’s where you caught me. I ran with you afterward, for a time, in your spectacle of a slave parade, though I can’t say I recall it. You saw to that.”

Eredin is easy to read. He thinks with brutish directness, tracing a savage line from his greater muscle and girth to her petite frame. 

He charges. She flicks her hand, the movement irritated, full of contempt. The ligaments of his knee split and he falls to the deck onto his mangled hands with another howl. 

Yennefer watches Eredin writhe. His armor clangs against the wooden planks, so much useless metal.

“You will remember,” Yennefer says quietly. The space of her heart has gone silent. Everything inside her cold, waiting. “And then I shall send you to your long overdue death.”

She collapses Eredin’s remaining knee to ensure his cooperation. While he trembles in pain, she reaches toward his mind and comes up against resistance. Eredin is no stranger to magic. His defenses demonstrate training of one kind or another. But no training can rival what she learned in her years after Aretuza, at Sodden, at Stygga and what she became there.

Yennefer concentrates herself into a needle-point so sharp it hurts her mind to hold. Eredin is no match for her. His defenses crumple and give way. 

His memory is long. The world of the Aen Elle fills her mind through his eyes. Beautiful place, soaring mountains, lush greenery, palaces like a vision of flowers captured in their prime. Or so it was before the White Frost came. She sees the graceful pillars devoured by drifts of snow, crowds of Aen Elle refugees fleeing an arctic landscape that was once farmland, or a village known for its music festivals, or a forest of rare sacred trees. Desperation takes hold and hurries toward a frantic hope of other worlds, where the annihilating Frost has not yet reached. They pursue that hope. The Aen Elle become the Wild Hunt that haunts the skies of other worlds, hunting prey and slaves, yes, but most of all for a rescue. An escape. 

Yennefer glides along the web of Eredin’s memories, finding what she seeks: a violet-eyed sorceress, a white-haired witcher, and a young girl who carries ancient blood and the key to the gateway between worlds. 

_There. Now you remember._ Yennefer makes her voice thunder through Eredin’s head. She resounds in every corner of him. _This is Cirilla of Vengerberg. My daughter. That witcher is Geralt of Rivia. The keep that you attacked is Kaer Morhen, and the witcher that your mage captured and tortured is Eskel. I am Yennefer of Vengerberg. You will know our names. We are they who shall outlast you._

Recognition stirs in him, rage and pride, a smolder of vengeance. Futile and too late. Yennefer holds his consciousness in her magic, his every memory, thought and feeling. She gathers to herself the cold in her heart and lets it build, the fury that she became to survive him and his like. 

The storm that will end with him. In him.

Yennefer pries his mind open and pours the storm in. 

Eredin screams. His mind writhes all around her but she stays within it, she will watch him die from the inside, her magic rushing through him in a ferocious torrent that destroys everything it touches, freezes every memory and shatters it, gusts through the apparatus of thought and emotion and desire and fear, obliterating all until Eredin’s mind lies bleak and emptied. Barren.

Yennefer comes back to herself, blinking. There are tears in her eyes. 

“Yen?”

“Geralt,” she murmurs. 

And then they are there beside her, her two witchers. Geralt gathers her in his arms and she leans into the weight of his armor, the metal painfully cold against her, but she doesn’t care. She’s emptied a storm from her, and she wobbles with its absence. 

Eskel stands over Eredin, prodding him with a swordblade. 

“What’d you do to him?” Eskel asks.

“I killed him.” Yennefer is so tired. 

Eskel cocks his head. “But he’s still breathing.” 

“Well then, see to that.”

Eskel looks at her, looks at Geralt, shrugs and slides his sword in a quick, brutal thrust beneath Eredin’s helmet. There’s a sound of splitting meat. Eredin doesn’t move. 

Gerat encloses her in his embrace. 

“Geralt,” she mumbles into his arm. She is so tired, but she can’t stop. Not yet. “Is Caranthir dead?”

“Yeah, he’s dead.”

“Good. Good.” Yennefer allows her eyes to close. “We have to go. Now.”

“Yeah. Gotta find Ciri.” His voice reverberates through his armor and thrums around her. A warm retreat she could hide in. But. 

“I know where she is,” she says.

“You’ve seen her?” Eskel’s voice, close by but not touching either of them. He spares no attention for niceties until the job is done. The thought brings a fond smile to her face. 

“Yes, though not with my own eyes. In Eredin’s memories.”

“Eredin’s?” Dread in Geralt’s voice.

Yennefer opens her eyes, looks between the twin set of viper eyes that narrow to slits as she speaks. “It seems Avallac’h has tricked us both. He left with Ciri during the fighting. Eredin saw them walking on the shore.”

“Walking where?”

Yennefer is about to speak when the sky tears open. 

It isn’t a storm, though the colossal roar in the heavens sounds like a thunderstorm large enough to cover the Continent. The three of them gaze upward. An apocalyptic void has opened to blacken the sky, its edges swirling with cosmic energy. But it is no eclipse. Something’s visible on the other side. 

Strange stars. And--

“Yen?” Geralt tears his eyes from the sight. “What the hell’s happening?”

“I find it damned hard to believe.” Yennefer squints. In the abyss overhead, she sees that shape again-- like the moon, round, enormous, but awash with blue like oceans. Another world.

“It’s the Conjunction of the Spheres,” she says. “The gateway between the worlds is open.” 

Eskel snarls a curse that he must have picked up from the Skelligers. 

“How?” Geralt demands.

“Look.” 

The river of light that circles the vortex plunges down toward the earth, into the ruined elven tower that stands on the cliff to the north. It forms a pulsing vein running from the tower to the titanic portal overhead. 

“Avallac’h,” Eskel says in a voice like bear claws on rock. “Gotta be.”

“At least we know where to look for Ciri,” Geralt says. 

“And that Aen Elle bastard,” Eskel growls.

“Come.” Yennefer slides out of Geralt’s arm. “We haven’t much time.” 

* * *

Kill him. Kill him. 

The world’s turned to nightmare. Portals open mid-air and giants and beasts pour out, creatures he’s never heard of flying on wings that don’t belong on this plane. The earth shakes. Balls of fire careen down from the sky and smash craters into the earth.

Another conjunction. A fever dream of monsters. Apocalypse, flames, earthquakes. 

They run toward the elven tower, dodging meteors, claws, limbs that Geralt doesn’t have the first words to describe. Eskel keeps shouting half-started sentences like “Was that a…?” and “Sea manticores! They’ve got fucking sea manticores!” Geralt doesn’t know what he means, doesn’t bother to look. He can only think of Avallac’h. 

Should’ve known. Geralt brought him to Kaer Morhen, left him alone with Ciri, took his word for it when they left him alone with Ciri the Sunstone. Now Avallac’h’s got Ciri and the world’s ending.

Geralt will kill him. In this dimension or not.

“Yen!” Eskel has to yell. A meteor crashes nearby. They’re all pelted with flecks of dirt from the blast. Eskel yells something but their ears ring.

“What?” Yen shouts.

“I said, can’t you portal us?”

Portals. Geralt’s stomach twists even as he runs.

“No!” Yen shouts. “Do you see all these portals opening around us? If I open a portal, who knows where we’ll end up? Even magic is falling apart!” 

Great. One more reason to hate portals.

With terrible timing, a portal peels open nearby. Something too big with too many limbs tries to come through. Eskel blasts it with an Aard so strong the creature stumbles backward into the portal with a hideous shriek. The gate closes. A severed claw like a spider leg drops to the ground. 

“Signs’re still good,” Eskel yells.

“Aren’t you a prodigy?” Yen sounds only a little cross. 

They run. The closer they get to the tower, the fewer portals open around them. Something about the tower, the light, whatever Avallac’h’s doing to Ciri. 

Geralt’s jaws clench. 

Since she was a girl, everyone’s wanted Ciri for her Elder Blood. The power to leap across boundaries of time and space. The Law of Surprise gave her to him. If he can’t protect her… if he can’t save her now...

A chill wind blasts Geralt’s face. They’re close now but the steep path up the cliff disappears into snow.

“The hell?” Eskel says.

“The White Frost,” Yen says tightly. 

“ _The_ White Frost? Here? Now?”

She sets her eyes on the trail, doesn’t acknowledge the sharp turn of his head. 

“A’right. It’s that kinda day.” Eskel blows air through his lips and keeps climbing. 

Geralt slips, bangs his shins on frozen rock as they rise. Can’t care. He’ll drag his bleeding carcass the last steps if he has to. 

He rounds a bend in the rock. A blast of icy air gusts him back. Eskel catches him. Geralt sputters through the mouthful of ice that’s already collected on his beard. 

“Told ya you don’t eat enough, Wolf.” Eskel brushes some of the sudden snow off Geralt’s arm. “You got tossed like a stripling.”

“Why don’t you go ahead, big guy?” Geralt pushes himself off of Eskel to stand on his own two feet. 

Yen holds up a hand. “If you can hold off your schoolboy fisticuffs for a moment, I’ve a solution. Gvares, tavel!”

A rippling bubble of gray light surrounds them. The air’s instantly warmer.

“Stay in the shield,” Yen says.

Eskel traces the arc of the bubble with his eyes. “Magic’s falling apart, huh?”

“If you must know, witcher signs aren’t the only primitive magic capable of withstanding a world-ending catastrophe. Shall we?” 

They round the bend into a whirlwind of snow. The path’s nearly impossible to see, the sky gone white and furious. But the blizzard parts around the arc of Yen’s shield, and the small space of clearance lets them stumble onward a few steps at a time. 

Then the white wall gives way. There’s the elven tower up ahead, a white glow emanating from within the distinctive teardrop arches of the ruins. Even through Yen’s magic, the temperature drops. 

Eskel frowns, following something with his eyes. Geralt sees it: another dome, like Yennefer’s, but much larger. It arches over the entire tower and extends below the cliffs.

“Damn,” Yen says. “Avallac’h’s surrounded the tower with a magic barricade.”

“Can you dismantle it?” Geralt asks.

“Dismantle it?” Must’ve been a dumb suggestion. Oh well. “No. I can make a tear, at best.”

“Big enough to get us all through?” Eskel glances from her to the barricade and back. 

“Perhaps… if we…” Yen holds up her hand, the tips of her fingers glowing. “Eskel, cast Yrden.”

“Yrden? Here?”

“No. At the New Port, where I should like to spend the next week with minimal disturbance. Yes, here! At the barricade.”

Eskel shrugs one shoulder, throws down an Yrden that would pin the flow of a volcano in place. It was enough to hold Caranthir. The barricade ripples, and Yen’s fingers spark green. 

“Splendid,” she says. “We can make it through. I’ll cast the puncture. The moment I finish the spell, Eskel, you must cast the Yrden sign. It will be enough to keep the breach open for a few moments.”

“Sure. And slow us down if we try to get through.”

“Don’t cast it on the ground. Cast it at the barricade. Can you do that?”

Eskel raises his eyebrow and considers the barricade. 

“You can,” Yen says.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sure of it.” 

The edge of his lip quirks up. “Guess I’m doin’ it, then.”

“Excellent. Now then. Are you both ready?”

Eskel flexes his fingers. Geralt steps as close to the barricade as he can without leaving Yen’s shield.

Yennefer raises her arms and shouts in another voice that grips the ether and molds it to her will. “Agored, teirgane agored!”

The air booms, and the swirl of the barricade draws back from a space the size of an arch. 

“Now, Eskel!”

Eskel raises his hand. There’s a burst of otherworldly light and the rune of Yrden burns itself into the top of the arch that Yen has made. The rippling light of the barricade stutters, slowing. 

“Go!” Yen yells. 

The three of them rush forward at a sprint. They run through the breach, hear the rune collapse behind them and the whoosh of the barricade sealing its wound. The air goes suddenly silent.

Geralt turns, breath coming a little faster. This side of the barricade looks like frosted glass-- pale, translucent, the shapes of mountains nearby only dimly outlined. There’s no trace of wind or snow in here. It’s eerily quiet, except for a faint hum. His medallion thrums on his chest. 

Eskel flexes his fingers again. Yen heaves a sigh, shoulders slumped. 

“Huh,” Eskel says. “That actually worked.”

“Of course it did.” Yen rolls her shoulders and sharpness returns to her eyes. “Now, shall we give Avallac’h our regards?”

“Gladly.” The word carved by Geralt’s teeth. 

They ascend up the snow-blown path. There’s no more need to stay in Yen’s shield, so Eskel stalks ahead of them, head tilted. He comes to a halt on a piece of crumbled stonework that had been steps in ancient times. 

Geralt comes to his side and follows his gaze to the once-beautiful tower that’s splashed white in the cobwebs of light spun by Avallac’h’s hands. 

_Any sign of Ciri?_ Yen’s whisper in his head. 

Geralt sniffs. Eskel does the same. She must be talking to them both. _No._

 _Ah. It’s to be a civil conversation, then._ Yen flutters her eyes closed with a hint of pique. _Pity._

They step carefully, quietly. Avallac’h’s lost in his magic until the three of them step over the threshold and into the ruined courtyard. 

The spirals of light wink out. Avallac’h lowers his hands and then his gaze, turning now to regard them all with pale blue Aen Elle eyes. “Ah. All three of you have come. How unfortunate.” 

Circling to the right, Eskel flips his sword into a reverse grip. A practiced motion that makes visible the power in his shoulders. Show-off. 

Geralt circles to the left, mirroring Eskel. “For you. Where’s Ciri?” 

Those eyes flick from Eskel to Geralt. “Nearby. Listen--”

“Not good enough.” Yen uses that other voice, the one Geralt never hears directed at him. It’s cold iron, deadly. This is the voice of a woman that he wants in his bed every night. “Tell me where my daugher is. Or there will be nothing left of you to bury.” 

“Yennefer.” Avallac’h’s steady, the pale stare level. “I must assure you that I am merely aiding Cirilla. I suspect that you will understand the choice she’s made. You most of all.”

“Cut the crap,” Eskel snaps. “It’s a simple question. Where’s Ciri?” 

Avallac’h doesn’t turn his eyes from Yen. “Cirilla is here.” 

“No more riddles.” Geralt stops pacing, stands loosely. “Show us.”

Avallac’h spares only a quick glance for Geralt, as if ignoring the interruption of a child. “I trust you to see reason here, Yennefer.”

“Then show me reason, Sage. Immediately. Before I decide it would be simpler to animate your corpse and ask our questions then.”

“That won’t be necessary, Mother.”

Ciri emerges from behind one of the stone columns. Behind her, an arched doorway opens to a funnel of rushing shadow. A portal, different from any that Geralt has ever seen. 

Geralt’s stomach folds into itself, closes around a tight knot. Something’s happening here that he doesn’t understand, and he can’t find his footing.

Eskel lowers his sword arm at his side. The fire drops from Yen’s eyes. Avallac’h bows his head. The Sage retreats a few steps and stands with the invisible politeness of a valet. Nothing’s making sense here.

Ciri descends the stone steps. “Avallac'h speaks the truth. I asked him to help me open the tower-- because I aim to enter it.”

The knot twists. “Didn't think it worthwhile to tell us, warn us of your plans?” Geralt says, every word tasting of acid.

Ciri lowers her eyes. “I'm sorry, I know, I should have…”

“Ciri.” Yen, magnificent Yen, steps forward with the grace of a woman who knows there is an explanation for all of this. “That portal up there… where does it lead?”

Who cares, Geralt wants to shout. Nowhere good. The Hunt’s defeated, the sky’s split open. They need to leave, go somewhere safe. 

But where’s safe at the end of the world?

Ciri raises her chin and there’s a ghost of Yen in the movement. The same angle, the same defiant lift of the head. “To the realm of the White Frost.”

“No,” Geralt says.

Yen’s violet eyes flash toward him. He almost takes a step back. Those eyes-- suddenly they’re old, at home in the face of a woman who has seen over a hundred years on this Continent. She understands something that he doesn’t, and it’s gutting her. 

“She can’t…” Geralt can’t look at those aged sorceress eyes. He turns to Ciri. Ciri still has her head tilted at the same angle that Yen uses when they argue. “Ciri. Don’t do this now. Eredin’s dead. Caranthir’s dead. We can get out of here.”

“The Wild Hunt might be defeated. The White Frost is not.” Ciri looks older, too. Not the little girl in Brokilon or the she-devil who terrorized Kaer Morhen. There’s a woman standing here, tall, unflinching. “I have seen worlds bound in ice. I know what awaits you. The Elder Blood can stop it-- and I am all that’s left of the Elder Blood.”

The sound of metal rubbing against cloth. Eskel’s sliding his sword back into its sheath. 

“There’s…” Geralt starts. Yen has turned away. Eskel’s lowered his head. He looks at Geralt now from beneath raised eyebrows. 

“There’s gotta be another way,” Geralt says because she is the one he needs to build a roof over. Out there is winter but he can build her a hearth and rise early every morning to build the fire so when she wakes up, she’ll never know she was cold. He can keep her warm. He can keep her safe. 

“Geralt,” Yen says softly. 

Ciri shakes her head, a heavy movement. This world has weighed on her. She crosses the weathered stones of the ruin to press her palms against his chest. 

“What can you know about saving the world, silly?” The ghost of slyness in her smile. “You're but a witcher.”

Hasn’t that been enough? What else can he be?

 _Geralt._ Yen’s voice in his head. 

Eskel’s crossed the courtyard. He plants his big hand on Ciri’s slim shoulder, squeezes it the way Vesemir would. 

_Yen. We can’t let her leave._

_Yes, Geralt, we can._

_You can’t mean that. She wants to fght the White Frost? How? It can’t be beaten._

_There’s a chance it can, and she wishes to try._

Eskel leans down to press his forehead against Ciri’s. He’s saying something to her but Geralt can’t listen right now.

_Please._

Geralt doesn’t know what else to say, even in his thoughts. 

The smell of lilac and gooseberries rises in a cloud around him. Yen presses her shoulder against his, finds his hand and holds it tightly in her own. 

_Our daughter has a choice before her, Geralt. Allow her to make it._

An answer rages in him: no. But even as it kicks against him, Geralt knows it’s the wrong answer. 

Ciri comes to them now with shoulders straight, jaw set, her mother’s daughter, and for a moment Geralt can only see her as he’d found her on the Isle of Mists when she’d been nothing but a limp body. How small she’d felt when he lifted her from that bed and rocked her in his arms. A swallow with stilled wings. 

Yen squeezes his hand. 

“This is my story, not yours.” Half an apology floats through Ciri’s eyes, but it’s banished and gives way to the resolve underneath. Same as she’s always had once her mind’s made up. “You must let me finish telling it.”

Her story. She’s been his justification all these years. The girl who deepened a life that had been the Path and little more. 

But her story-- how does it go? The Lion Cub of Cintra, the little girl in Brokilon, the witcheress, the student of Aretuza. The Lady of Space and Time. What room does that story have for him?

He is the father who helped grow her. Who guided, who protected, who fought. Who stood out of the way. 

Geralt’s surprised to find he can speak. “Good luck, Ciri.” 

She eyes him. “I was afraid of what you would think. But now I see… you might’ve understood, after all.”

“Give an old man some credit.”

Ciri lets out a ray of a smile. “Let’s not be excessive.” 

She goes to Yen and the two of them look at one another without speaking. Aloud, anyway. But Yen’s face changes as they stare at one another and Geralt realizes they’re speaking telepathically.

He looks away. Ciri’s heart quickens. When he looks at her again, she’s looking up and blinking rapidly. 

“Alright.” Ciri sniffles, lets her chin drop only when she’s armed herself with the trace of a brash grin. “Keep your fingers crossed.” 

Yen crowds against Geralt, and Eskel comes to Yen’s other side. He reaches one arm across Yen’s shoulders, finding Geralt’s.

Ciri turns toward the portal. Each of her footfalls pangs in Geralt’s chest.

Geralt doesn’t believe in gods, can’t pray. But he believes in Ciri. She is the only creed he has ever needed. 

Ciri walks away from him. _Ciri_ , Geralt thinks, _Ciri, Ciri_ , all the prayer he has. He chants it as she ascends the stairs of the ancient temple, and enters the portal, and vanishes. 

* * *

Cold. Breath-taking, bone-breaking. Her lungs hurt to breathe it. 

Ciri cries out. The roof of her mouth singes with that cold. She throws her arms up the way she would against any assault and a blizzard wind crackles against her. Cold, white, snow and ice in a whirlwind, she can’t see, and this was a terrible idea, horrific, how is she supposed to find--

Her eyes are painfully exposed in the wind. They pick out areas of greater white in the blizzard and she forces herself to squint against the wind. Light, ahead. But not light. Not truly. A presence.

Ciri’s blood stirs. Yennefer taught her many years ago but still she remembers those old lessons about magic. This is nothing she’s seen before in all of her years of traveling planes. The White Frost-- the heart of this devouring winter. It’s deep, bottomless, without conscience or thought. A cancer spread through the organs of the worlds and knowing only the need to expand, to continue itself. 

Gods, it’s so much larger than her. 

Ciri braces herself against the wind. No human body is meant to withstand this gale. Nor elven nor witcher nor-- this isn’t a plane for life. 

Run. She ought to run! 

But--

Ciri closes her eyes, granting them a moment’s escape from the cold. 

Only one question she needs. Only one. Who is she?

Winter surrounds her. Howling. 

She is Cirilla of Vengerberg, daughter of Yennefer. She is a Child of the Elder Blood. She--

An ancient cold stretches around her, infinite and bleak. Vast as ocean.

Ah, but she is ocean, too. 

Ciri reaches down into herself, remembering now, assured, and finds what she has witnessed before: a reservoir of power that reaches beond the limits of herself, this plane and any plane, between the atoms of space, a breath passed continuously from aeon to aeon, taking form as it pleases, dissolving as it must, infinite potentiality, an energy forever fluctuating, being, presence, that which sees and is not seen. Nothing and everything, unbound and indestructible, and she is That. 

Ciri goes still.

She takes a breath. Readies herself. And then she marches forward, into the heart of the storm.

* * *

Once Ciri is gone, Yen sighs so long that it sounds like the life leaking out of her. She sags against Geralt, who leans against her. 

Their kid, Eskel reminds himself. He shoves down that pang of jealousy. Ciri is their kid. She’s the girl he taught, but she’s their daughter. 

When he’s sure their attention is occupied, Eskel risks a glance over his shoulder. Avallac’h has found himself a seat on the opposite side of the ruined temple. He’s carefully avoiding any glance at them. 

For the best. This might as well be a family vigil, the three of them gathered as faithfully as any congregation near the portal where Ciri vanished. 

Not a vigil. She’s coming back. He has to be sure of it for all of them. 

Eskel settles himself on the step above Yen and Geralt, spreads his legs so the inside of his left calf presses against Geralt’s hip and the inside of his right calf hugs Yen’s thigh.

“One tough kid you raised,” Eskel says. “Cerys know what she’s getting into?”

Yen huffs. It might’ve been a laugh in a different situation. “Getting into? Aren’t you putting the cart before the horse?”

Geralt slowly raises his head. 

“Don’t you dare, Geralt.” Yen elbows him.

She’s got that look on her face that means Geralt’s thinking up a terrible pun. “Hey.” Eskel taps her shoulder. “I didn’t get to hear it.”

“No, you didn’t. Consider it a favor.”

Geralt frowns. “I thought it was pretty good.” 

“Ah, c’mon, Yen.” Eskel pushes his finger into Yen’s shoulder. 

Yen leans her head back on his leg and sighs.

“Okay.” Geralt shifts so he’s facing both of them. “I said-- well. I thought: hey, Yen, don’t be a _neigh_ -sayer.”

Geralt has the dopiest damned grin when he thinks he’s being clever. “Uh,” Eskel says.

“Did I not warn you?” Yen pats Eskel’s boot. 

“Hm. If I didn’t know better…” Eskel lays his hands on Yen’s shoulders, pressing his thumbs into that tender spot between the shoulder blade and the spine where she holds her tension. “...I’d say you’re tryin’ to deflect.”

“Ha. Deflect?”

“We were talking about Cerys.”

Yen closes her eyes as Eskel works his thumbs into her knotted pebbles of muscle. “Mmm... Cerys…. Lovely girl but we’re all being a bit preemptive, mm?”

“Are we?” Eskel arcs his chin up at Geralt. “Didja ask what her intentions are? Do the protective father thing?”

Geralt blinks once, as close as he comes to a casual expression. “Should I?”

“Damn. I gotta tell you two everything, don’t I.”

Nothing in this conversation matters, of course. It’s mindless prattle, stupid jokes. Anything to keep their minds off the daughter who just marched into battle with a phenomenon that none of them understand. 

Eskel doesn’t mind. That’s his job here. A few months ago, Geralt and Yen called up shields in bed when he yelled them awake. His turn to hold them upright now.

Eskel keeps up the stream of bad jokes, dumb stories, ridiculous questions. Keeps it up and holds them with his legs, his arms, his will to be what they need from him, until the air in the ruined doorway flashes blue-green and Ciri comes back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The third stage of trauma recovery is Reconnection & Integration. Sometimes, staying human / reclaiming humanity is an act of defiance. It can take a village. 
> 
> The meditation is a riff on a neti-neti meditation and Ciri’s bit at the end is a riff on the Chandogya Upanisad and the declaration “tat tvam asi” / “thou art that.” It doesn’t exactly fit the world of the Witcher, but I wanted to work it in. 
> 
> Hard part’s over. Only the epilogue left!


End file.
